Museums
Explore the world of art, science, and history by visiting a museum in Illinois. Museum trips can make your lessons come alive and can offer a fun way to spend the day learning.
Art Museums
Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
The Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum in Chicago features the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere. The Adler is home to more than 35,000 square feet of exhibits, rrom scale models of the Solar System, to ancient astronomical instruments, to interactive adventures. The Adler is the only museum in the world with two full-size planetarium theaters which feature a variety of shows.
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum was founded to house the biological and anthropological collections assembled for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Includes a world-class natural history library of more than 250,000 volumes. The Field Museum is the permanent home of Sue, the world's largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex.
Art Institute of Chicago Museum
Exhibits include Asian art, European paintings, armor, textiles, African and American Indian art, and modern/comtemporary art. Also features special exhibits.
Children's Museums
Association of Children's Museums
The Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) is a professional member service organization for the children’s museum field. ACM is the only organization representing museums and professionals dedicated to early childhood play, the starting point in the continuum of lifelong learning. The Association promotes the impact children’s museums have in preparing children for school, building 21st century skills and nurturing a love for lifelong learning.
Chicago Children's Museum
Chicago Children’s Museum is a place where families and caregivers with infants and children are encouraged to create, explore, and discover together through play. The museum features three vibrant floors of exhibits and activities that provide sensory experiences and engaging educational content focusing on literacy, science, math, visual and performing arts, and health. Some of CCM's most popular exhibits include: Dinosaur Expedition, where kids can dig for dinosaur bones in an authentic excavation pit; WaterWays, an interactive system of pulleys, pumps, and pipes showcasing the wonders of water; Kids Town, an early-learning exhibit featuring a real CTA bus, mini-grocery store and kid-sized cityscape; daily free family art workshops in the Kraft Artabounds Studio; Pritzker Playspace, an area designed specifically for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and their parents; Play It Safe, a realistic firehouse and fire truck that invites families to learn about fire safety through play; and Skyline, a National Science Foundation-funded exhibit that explores the science, engineering, art, and technology that keep Chicago's tallest buildings standing.
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Featured Resources
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Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This radical treatise on public education has been a New Society Publishers' bestseller for 10 years! Thirty years of award-winning teaching in New York City's public schools led John Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling does little but teach young people to follow orders as cogs in the industrial machine. In celebration of the ten-year anniversary of Dumbing Us Down and to keep this classic current, we are renewing the cover art, adding new material about John and ...
The Unprocessed Child: Living Without School
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Home Schooling from Scratch : Simple Living, Super Learning
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Catholic Home Schooling: A Handbook for Parents
Mary Kay Clark, the director of the accredited and successful Seton Home Study School shows parents why and how to teach their children at home, giving scores of practical examples and setting forth the spiritual, moral and academic advantages. The book includes chapters by several experts and covers Catholic curriculum, textbooks, Catholic family life, legal aspects, discipline, socialization, home management, using computers, children with learning disabilities, single-parent home schooling, t...
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Home schooling has long been regarded as a last resort, particularly by African-American families. But in this inspirational and practical memoir, Paula Penn-Nabrit shares her intimate experiences of home-schooling her three sons, Charles, Damon, and Evan. Paula and her husband, C. Madison, decided to home-school their children after racial incidents at public and private schools led them to the conclusion that the traditional educational system would be damaging to their sons’ self-esteem...