The geology teaching center of interactive and hands-on learning experience in geology and botany at Říčany near Prague.
Opening of the geology teaching center of interactive and hands-on learning experience in geology and related sciences was celebrated near the 1st Elementary school building on the Masaryk Square at Říčany on Thursday 9 April 2015. The center, which in its area and scope is a unique national institution, offers a customized and individual-oriented teaching for children, teachers and visitors from general public. Its outdoor exhibition includes rocks cropping out all over the Czech Republic´s territory, a model of a paleontological findsite and a well-conceived set-up of water-related elements that can simulate floods or landslides. Visitors may pan gold and semi-precious stones in an artificial pond. Plant buffs may also get a fair treat by watching a combination of rocks with typical vegetation, thus evoking a botanical garden. In the built-in geological laboratory one can cut and polish stones in order to study them under the microscope. The geology teaching center was built within „Science for education, education for science“ project co-funded from the European Social Fund and the Czech national budget. The instructors active on the project come from the Czech Geological Survey. Construction of the center was carried out by the Říčany Museum, building of the geological laboratory was financed by the town of Říčany.
