Children learn about giant beasts at Discovery Museum

Four-year-old Darby Thew of Fox River Grove reached with her tiny hand to touch the long, curved tusk of a woolly mammoth during "Small Discoveries - Woolly Mammoths & Mighty Mastodons" Wednesday at the Lake County Discovery Museum near Wauconda.

Museum educator Jennifer Hart showed children ages 2-5 a replica of the tusk, as well as fossil casts of teeth from a mammoth and a mastodon, before taking them to view the actual fossils in the museum's collection.

Children learned about the giant beasts that once roamed Lake County as Hart read stories and provided them with crafts based on the large animals.