Junior Paleontologist Educational Kits

The Florida Paleontological Society (FPS) and the Florida Geological Foundation (FGF) joined forces early on promoting and celebrating National Fossil Day (NFD) at the Florida Museum of Natural History and promoting NFD throughout the year at exhibit openings and public outreach events. In 2012 both groups began to plan for the “Fossils at the Fort” celebration at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in St. Augustine, the first NFD event to be held at a Florida National Park Service location. To prepare for the activities, FPS and FGF partnered with the Florida Fossil Hunters (FFH) to assemble two Junior Paleontologist Educational Kits to be used with the Junior Paleontologist Ranger Program. The kits included fossils, replicas, books, and activities to augment the program and to enrich the experience of the Junior Rangers. To learn more about the Junior Paleontologist Ranger Program, please visit the National Park Service website.

After the success of the “Fossils at the Fort” event, the two kits were donated to the NPS Washington Bureau, where the kits have been used by elementary and middle school classrooms in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, D. C. This inspired the Florida Paleontological Society, the Florida Geological Foundation and the Florida Fossil Hunters to set a goal to distribute one kit to all of the National Park units within the state of Florida. We are proud to announce that we have achieved this goal in 2015 and are now expanding to other National Park Units across the country! 18 Jr. Kits are now in use with more kits in the pipeline for further expansion. With the 2016 celebration of the National Park Service’s centennial and the White House initiative of “Every Kid In A Park” now is great time to consider donating specimens to this incredible program. As of 2017 the number of children interacting with the Jr. kits now exceeds 10,000 annually, thanks to the contributions from our partners and members of the public like you! Please check out the Junior Kits below to get an idea of the types of specimens that we can use your help in creating these awesome educational kits.

Download a PDF (3.2 MB) with a list of items we need for these educational kits. Please consider donating to this great project today!