Taxonomy

Our church takes the kids on a museum or cultural experience the first Sunday of every month.  This month we spent a couple of hours at the Staten Island Museum learning about their collections. The Museum was founded 128 years ago by a group of amateur naturalists with an astounding interest in education and study - local history, art, and more. The museum is the last remaining interdisciplinary general interest museum left in New York City.  It's way cool.

Taxonomy Worksheet. I sorted by shape :) 

The sheer number of varied items that the museum has is boggling.  The director, Diane Matyas, worked with the young and the young at heart in attendance to explain how items are sorted into categories. She gave each of us a big pile of candy and a taxonomy worksheet.  We spent some time talking about how different items can be categorized, as well as about visible and invisible characteristics (like how the candy tastes!)

I was amazed at how similarities and differences jumped out at me once I some structure in front of me.  Next time I clean out a junk drawer or the hall closet I'll use something similar to help bring order to the chaos.

Oh yeah, and taxonomy is the science of sorting. How cool is that :)