Table of Contents

Introduction
Curioser and Curioser
Keeping Track of Your Collection
Project: How to start and keep a field notebook 
Storing Your Collection
Cataloging Your Collection
 
1. Collecting Rocks and Minerals
   What are rocks and what are minerals?
   Where to look and what to collect
   How to clean and care for your collection
   Project: Make a display board
   Interview with a Budding Scientist
   Geodes and crystals: Why some rocks get all the bling
   Project: Grow your own crystals
   Epsom Salt Crystals
   Table Salt Crystals
 
2. Collecting Animal and Bird Tracks
   Keeping Records in Your Notebook
   Where to Look
   Collecting tracks with a camera
   Tips for photographing tracks
   Project: Making casts of tracks
   Casts in soil
   Casts in snow
   Make a track album
   Displaying your collection of tracks
 
3. Collecting Seashells
   Meet the mollusks
   Two familiar types
   How to build your collection
   Caring for your collection
   Project: Turn a pizza box into a collector's shadow box
   An Interview with collector Tom Eichhorst
 
4. Collecting Fossils
   What are fossils?
   Identifying your fossils
   How to collect
   How to clean fossils 
   Displaying and storing your collection  can we get photos of these?
   Keeping records
   Project: Model magic
   Collector Mary Anning
 
5. Collecting Insects
   The age of insects
   What defines an insect
   Identifying insects
   Where to look
   Supplies
   Killing insects
   Mounting and displaying your collection
   Project: make a plant and insect display box
   Caring for your collection
   What to know about buying insects
   An interview with Dr. Ayesha Burdett
 
6. Collecting Plants
   Start by looking locally
   How to collect: Part 1
   How to collect: Part 2
   Preserving your plant collections
   Pressing and mounting flowers and leaves
   Project: Pressing plants
   Project: Mounting dried and pressed plants
   Drying thicker plants and Leaves
   Drying delicate flowers
   Preparing pine cones
   Organizing your collection
 
Appendix
   About the N. M. Museum of Natural History and Science
   Resources
   Acknowledgements
   Index
   About the Author
 

About the Author

Michael Sanchez is a naturalist and educator who teaches student groups at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in Albuqurque.