The Online Nature Collector’s Swap Shop is an extension of the swap shop that Mr. Eric has run at Wonder Works, a Children’s Museum in Oak Park, for the past year or so.
Since none of us can go the the Field Museum or Chicago’s Nature Museum this month, we need to find other ways for natural history fans to commune with the rocks, minerals, seashells, and fossils they love. We hope that the Online Nature Collector’s Swap Shop will help Wonder Works member families make their own home nature museums as they shelter in place during the spring and early summer of 2020.
We developed this website to help you add natural history specimens to your home nature museum. These pages include close-up photos of the Swap Shop collections and specimens available for trade each week, plus information and links that can help you learn more about the specimens.
For ideas about how to set up and organize your natural history collections, visit this page on the swap shop website: https://natureswapshop.org/home-nature-museum/
The Wonder Works Nature Collector’s Swap Shop was inspired by similar nature swaps run by other museums and zoos (including a Nature Swap Shop run by Mr. Eric at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum during the late 1970s). The following web page has links to a number of other nature swaps in the United States and Canada: https://natureswapshop.org/other-nature-swap-shops/
Nature Collector's Garden and Nature's Swap Shop 