Students will embark on a self-guided walking tour through the museum’s indoor and outdoor exhibits. Every exhibit focuses on an important concept: the natural history of Virginia, animal and plant adaptations, endangered and threatened species, predator/prey relationships, food chains and webs and environmental conservation.
The Virginia Living Museum is the mid-Atlantic region’s premier science education facility where science is taught with a hands-on, minds-on philosophy. Our programs are SOL-correlated, grade-level targeted and endorsed by the Virginia Department of Education, U.S Department of Education and the NSF.
The museum specializes in developing experiential programming that is inquiry based and stresses critical thinking skills. All programs are taught by professional educator/scientists who teach in a way that makes science both real and memorable. The museum also offers 20-minute small group and assembly-style programs that can be added to a self-guided field trip. These fast-paced programs enable students to get up close and personal with wild animals.
Unlike most museums where specimens are protected by glass cases and white gloves, the VLM’s non-live collections are used extensively in student programs. Students become more invested in learning when they can handle real natural history specimens like sea turtle ribs, otter pelts and fossils in hands-on discovery centers. The Living Green house and conservation garden showcase options to build, garden and live green. Along the outdoor boardwalk trail, students will encounter rare red wolves, bald eagles, come face to face with a playful river otter and observe wetland birds such as herons, egrets and brown pelicans.
Students can also travel beyond the boundaries of their classrooms with out-of-this-world space science programs taught by the museum’s astronomers. The state-of-the-art digital projection system can project a view of the skies from anywhere on Earth across a time period of 200,000 years, or as seen from any other known body in the universe. Planetarium programs can take students on an unforgettable journey through the solar system and galaxies beyond.
The museum also has programming for groups that can’t make it to Newport News. “Museums-in-a-trunk” are Discovery boxes, which bring the fun and excitement of learning at the VLM into your own classroom. Each theme contains natural history specimens and artifacts from the museum’s collection that will challenge and engage your students.
The Virginia Living Museum reaches thousands of students each year from Virginia and neighboring states. The museum’s goal is to connect children to nature and generate a sense of wonder and amazement at the complexities of the natural world around us.
The museum is located between Williamsburg and Norfolk/Virginia Beach at 524 J. Clyde Morris Blvd., Newport News, VA. (I-64, exit 258-A).