MUSEUM DAY

Joshua, Noah, Katherine, and I started our volunteer positions at the museum today. We have been very excited and feel really lucky to have the opportunity. The place is just great, and the curator made it sound as though she would fully initiate each of them into the world of preservation, archiving, cataloging, and so on.

We were told that today we would start by putting together craft kits for school children. 800 of each and every little sucker. Ugh. They wanted me to cut out 800 bat wings out of felt. No thank you very much. I offered instead to take them to our "teacher's" resource center (that has generously allowed us access as homeschoolers) to use their die cutting machine.

We hadn't quite finished up with that when she asked the kids to go through the catalogs and make a list of things to order for the gift shop. She gave a very detailed lesson on how things are priced, taking into account shipping and tax (and so on and so forth).

While they were working on that there was another craft that needed to be put together, and a scavenger hunt that needed to be created, and a video that we needed to watch on proper housekeeping techniques in museums, and no, only watch half the video because now we need to archive photos and learn the 900 different fields in the computer where descriptions can be inputed and the 10,000 possible descriptions with another very detailed lesson and wait, what are we ordering from the catalogs? and someone needs to go out and check that the trail markers and maps were done properly, and the gift shop needs to be reorganized, and oh, here is another craft that needs to be finished only the person did it all wrong and it needs to be redone and what about those historical photos?

It was time to go. We were burned out and the kids didn't want to write out the rough draft of what we were cataloging anymore or do any more cutting. So we said our goodbyes, but before we could leave it was time to go into the restricted area to see how to store items with another very detailed lesson, and did we have any more ideas for some craft projects? And wait, don't forget this arm load of felt!

There is a lot to do there.

I'm still really excited that we have the opportunity. Really really. I do need to find a way to express the need to work on and complete a project before moving on. Even thought we got a TON done (it was expressed that we did more in few hours than they have gotten done in weeks) I still left feeling like I left a bunch of fires burning. It would have been nice to leave feeling a sense of accomplishment, considering how much we actually accomplished.

The biggest accomplishments I felt was "cataloging" in my brain all the various "school" subjects we were exposed to today. I could list them all, but honestly, what didn't the kids do today? We are so freaking lucky!!!

Oh yeah, we went over to the resource center later this afternoon to cut the gazillion pieces of felt. It turns out that it isn't any easier with the die cut machine. Ugh.