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Field Trip Activities

Some sort of structure is essential to every educational field trip, and activities are often a useful method of creating that structure. Activities can focus children's observation skills and enhance their appreciation of the outdoors. The activities can be exciting, stimulating, calming, or inspirational.

In choosing an activity, keep in mind your objectives in taking the field trip. What new knowledge or experiences do you want your children to gain?

Here are three of our favorite field trip activities from the Marine Activities, Resources & Education (MARE) Program at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

Stop. Look. Listen
Half a Hundred
Scavenger Hunt

Stop. Look. Listen.

This activity is about how to be a scientist and a careful observer of the natural world.

Explain the Rules

• Give children directions beforehand for what to do when they hear each of the Stop, Look, or Listen signals while on the field trip.

Approach the Area

• Approach with caution and care.
• Move slowly and quietly so animals are not scared away.
• Spread out the group so there is some distance between children.

When You Signal or Announce STOP!

• Find a place where the children can be comfortable for a few minutes.
• Have them get to a position where they can see the world at the same level as the organism or physical feature they're observing. If you're looking into a tidepool, get down on your hands and knees. GET CLOSE!

When You Signal or Announce LOOK!

• Have the children look around at the general area.
• Ask them to write or draw (for about 2-5 minutes) what they see and how it makes them feel. Tell them to describe the weather, sun, clouds, wind, land, and terrain.
• Now have them focus on something specific for 2-5 minutesÏ-a rock, plant, animal (bird, fish, invertebrate), cliff, sand dune, wave, or pattern in the sand.
• Ask them to describe in words and draw exactly what the organism or feature they are examining looks like.
  • Where is it?
  • How big is it?
  • What shapes and patterns do you see?
  • What is it doing?
  • How many of them are there?

• Tell them to use a hand lens and focus on something smallerÏ-ideally a section of whatever they were observing--for another 2-5 minutes.
  • How many colors do you see?
  • What colors do you see?
  • Describe the shapes.
  • Draw an enlargement of what you see.

When You Signal or Announce LISTEN!

• Have the children record.
  • What do you hear?
  • What do you think is making that sound?
  • Is there a rhythm to any of the sounds you hear?
  • How many different kinds of sounds can you hear?
  • How many of those sounds are made by humans?
  • How many are not made by humans?

Group Questions

• What special things did you observe?
• Who would like to share something they wrote or drew?
• What did it feel like to look closely at just one or two things?
• Did the time go quickly or slowly?
• Did you need more or less time?
• What forces might have made things the shape, color, and the orientation they are? (Hints: protection, moisture, wind, force of the water)
• Why is it so important to keep all human-made waste away from the ocean?

Half a Hundred

This activity is for chilren in the upper elementary grades and above. It encourages them to look closely at the world around them and create questions about what they see. Each child will need a pencil, paper, and hard surface such as a clipboard or notebook to write on.

Ask the children to number their paper from one to 50. Tell them they will be writing as many questions as they can, up to 50 questions, about the habitat they're visiting and the organisms they see there. No more than three questions can begin with "Why?" Distribute the students within a designated area and give them a time limitÏ-15 minutes is best. Don't worry if they get fewer than 50 questions.

After the designated time is up, gather them in a group and pick a number at random. Have each child read off the question he or she wrote in that number's space on their paper.

Ask the children if they expected they would be able to come up with so many questions.

As a follow up, you can have the children choose one of their questions and write a story, poem, or report, or draw a picture about it.

Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunts can be created for any habitat. Divide your group into pairs. Each pair of children needs only good observation skills, a note pad and pencil, a hand lens, and a scavenger-hunt list. Have them check items off their list as they discover them and write or draw something in their notebooks related to each item. Children can learn a good deal about what animal lives where by the signs it leaves behind as it works, eats, sleeps, and raises its young.

Here are some things you could put on your scavenger hunt list:

• Animal tracks
• An animal home
• Evidence of where an animal wasÏ-a flattened-down grassy area, a nest, a hole bored in the rock, an empty tunnel
• Something an animal has chewed
• Animal droppings (scat)
• An animal with no feet
• An animal with one foot
• An animal with two feet
• An animal with four feet
• An animal with more than four feet
• An animal with a hard shell
• An animal with a segmented body
• An animal with a soft, moist body
• An animal with scales
• An animal with webbed feet

• Eggs
• A bird with a crushing beak
• A bid with a probing beak
• A bird with a tearing beak
• A bird with a spearing beak
• A bird with a filtering beak
• A bird with wading legs
• A bird with walking feet
• A bird with running feet
• A bird with swimming feet

• Something red
• Something green
• Something blue
• Something purple
• Something round
• Somthing triangular

• Something you can only identify with a hand lens
• Something you have never seen before
• Something that moves very slowly
• Something that moves very fast

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