The purpose of this article is to describe the process and products associated with a successful Earth Day collaboration between a children's museum and a university education department. Using the idea of an "educational ecology" as a metaphor, we illustrate the collaborative development and implementation of this event hosted and funded by the museum, designed by an interdisciplinary group of pre-service educators, and geared toward the development of local ecological and conservation knowledge for area 1st-3rd grade students. A diverse array of day-of assessments, designed by the pre-service teachers, museum educators, and the university course instructor, indicated positive impacts across participant groups. We argue that the one-day nature of this type of museum/university collaboration makes it an ideal scalable model for other small museums interested in developing collaborative partnerships geared toward increased education and outreach capacity. In addition, our findings extend upon the research on teacher education/museum collaboration by bringing increased attention to the ways in which children's museums, largely absent from discussions on university partnerships, can contribute to the development of future educators.