Ideas for field trip to natural history museum

[OrdinaryTime]

I'm planning a field trip for our co-op to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. It is a group of about 20 kids ranging in age from 5 to 12 and all of them have visited the museum before, most several times. We've been studying taxonomy this year; we just recently went through anthropods and are just ready to move onto vertebrates. The museum is not able to offer a docent to our group, unless we want to join one of the guided tours for the general public, which I would rather not do. The museum does have some pre-made lessons for the different halls, but they are pretty boring worksheet-style stuff. We may be able to use some of the homeschool kits in their Discovery Room that seem more interesting, but I haven't heard back about that yet.

 

So I'm hoping to plan some kind of meaningful, interesting activity to go along with our visit. We did a scavenger hunt style activity at the zoo already this year so I don't want to repeat that. I was thinking maybe of making up mini-field guides with spaces for different anthropods and vertebrates that the kids can choose to fill in with their favorite examples - sketching the animal and adding essential info. Any other ideas??

[NotSoObvious]

Are you planning on limiting them to a certain area?

 

Are their parents going to be there? If so, I'd consider making some sort of guide for the parents- things to look for or point out, background info, interesting facts, sample questions to ask. That way the kids can focus on the experience and the parents have a little help with their guidance. The kids can spend longer in areas they are more interested in, etc.

 

Just an idea.

[Dahliarw]

This is sort of scavenger-esque. But maybe there is some way to do some sort of mystery that has to be solved. They'd get the clues from reading bout various artifacts in the museum. Just a thought, no idea on how exactly to make it work.

[Kalmia]

Well, this is a post-visit idea not an at the museum idea, but you could have the kids draw (on poster board) the layout of their own museum and name it. They should organize the rooms by the taxonomic criteria you have been teaching (i.e. in the Hall of Vertebrates you have the Mammalia Room, Aves Room, Reptilia Room etc). Each room should have some "signage" explaining what is inside (the definition of the group something like: "These animals have hair, are endothermic, give birth to live babies, and nurse thier young.") Then provide them with baggies of cut out animal pics from all the classes/phyla you have covered and let them sort (glue) the specimens into the proper halls and rooms. Then they can have a grand opening and present their new exhibits.

[kristinannie]

Could each of the kids get a disposible camera (or use their parent's phone) to take pictures in the museum. Then they could make some kind of a scrapbook (or poster) where they put the pictures and some information about whatever is in the picture. Or they could draw if they like that more. My kids love taking their own pictures. They could even present them to each other if you meet regularly.