Field Trip!

While I greatly appreciate the resource of school curriculum, not having one for science has provided me with a lot of freedom in my lesson planning.  I have been planning and teaching an entire unit on the ocean.  I chose that topic first for my 2nd grade class since the ocean is so easily accessible.  It is, after all, visible from the school.

This week, I decided to take my class on a mini field trip to the ocean.  I sent notes home warning parents to send the children to school in old clothes in case they got muddy.  At 2:00 PM, my class and took the 20 minute walk from the school across the salt flats to the ocean.

Naturally, all the other children in Jubilee wanted to see what we were up to.  So, my class of 11 ended up being more like 30 by the time we actually reached the water.

As soon as we arrived, children started stripping down to their skivvies as not to get their school uniforms dirty.

Earlier in the week, we learned about the seven characteristics of living things.  So, the intent of the field trip was to collect whatever they could find in a bucket and compare whether is was living or non-living.  The kids immediately began searching for crabs, seashells, and whatever else they could find.

They got quite a collection by the time we had to walk back to the school.

Since it was the end of the day, I had to save their findings until the following day.  I knew my class wouldn't smell very good with a bucket full of dead and live crabs, a dead jellyfish, sea water and shells.  However, if I left the bucket outside of my room, I knew it would either be stolen or disturbed.  It didn't go quite how I planned because my room ended up smelling worse than I imagined it would.  But, in the end it all worked out and the kids had fun!