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Complete Educational Trip Programs Rock and Mineral Studies for fourth or fifth grades! This program is devoted to the study of rocks and minerals. During your field trip, students participate in three activities: 1) Rock or mineral trading in the Swap Shop During Swap Shop Trading, students bring in a rock or mineral specimen and a completed Swap Shop Observation form on which they identify and write observations about their specimen. At the Swap Shop, our staff will assign each observation a 5-point value. The student may use their point total to trade for rocks or minerals from the Swap Shop Collection. Every rock, mineral, fossil and shell in the Swap Shop has a point value based on how rare it is. Students use their math skills to compute the point value of the rocks they wish to acquire in the trading. This activity gives students a chance to use science skills of observation, identification and communication. Large groups will have to do "group trades" within each classroom. Swap Shop Observation forms can be requested in advance, or printed from this webpage by clicking here --> SWAP SHOP FORM. (You must have Adobe Acrobat to view this file.) Swaps MUST BE scheduled at the time you make your field trip reservations! 2) The Rock Detective Lab, where they engage in identification and classification using our unique Rock Key and Rock Identification Chart, while solving a mystery for us! 3) A Mineral Madness Demonstration where they learn about how minerals are mined and then transformed into everyday products. In the Mineral Madness Demonstration, a staff demonstrator uses our Mineral Table of Fun and student volunteers to illustrate the 3 methods used for mining five different minerals. In the demonstration a student volunteer assists our staff in "scraping earth" away to find minerals retrieved from surface mining. They then check out Moh's hardness scale in order to predict which of the displayed products were derived from each mineral. This same procedure is used to explore 3 other minerals and two other methods of mining. This demonstration emphasizes mining methods in sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rock, reclamation, and engages students in using Moh's Hardness Scale and their knowledge of mineral characteristics to predict the mineral's uses in familiar everyday items. Our popular Young Forecasters Lab is combined with our Focused Topic Guide: Weather Alert! for first or second grade students. Students not only learn how a weather forecaster uses observation of common weather predictors to create a weather forecast that will be video taped in our Weather Station, but outside of the lab, they will explore the four weather exhibits and answer questions with the assistance of chaperones. Also available is our new Weather Demonstration! Our Physics Exploration Program for fifth or sixth grades is a fast moving two-part program where students explore concepts of friction, gravity, Newton's Law and variables which impact speed and distance with Tamiya (miniature 4-wheel drive) Race Cars. While on the exhibit floor, students will use either the Physics Topic Guide Resource Sheet or one of our newest Science Central Decks to do activities and answer questions about some of our 15 different physics exhibits that demonstrate everything from center of gravity to the aeronautical concepts of "lift and "drag"!
Ecosystem and Invertebrate Animal Program Fourth and fifth grade students love to touch and examine the animals from our Tidal Pool in the Ocean Ecosystem Lab! After they identify and observe the animals, they discuss the food chain within this ecosystem. Students can explore the Tidal Pool and using activity sheets from our Tidal Pool Cool! Topic Guide, they can question staff about everything from how the animals eat and protect themselves to comparing the animals' physical traits.
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