Learn it! Do it! Days are truly events! Set up as stations around the Exhibit Museum, each stop on your adventure is staffed by museum educators, and your students will explore these stations in small groups with their chaperones. Stations include hands-on activities, experiments, and presentations. Your students will leave with the products of some of these activities!
Playing with Science
Preschool and Kindergarten
December 11, 2009 and May 28, 2010
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Who knew that science could be so fun?! Your little ones will learn through hands-on play as they explore the natural world. Join Drippy the water droplet and his friends in a puppet show about the water cycle! Become a detective as you investigate mystery objects and figure out if they were alive or not! Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and make your own inky handprints to compare to dinosaur footprints. Get up close and personal with nature and touch our collection of furs, bones, and fossils! Add on a 45 minute planetarium show, Musical Sky, $2 (special price with Playing with Science).
Wild Weather Extravaganza
Grades 1-4
October 30, 2009; January 29 and April 2, 2010
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Our weather activities will blow your students away! Build a working weather station, explore extreme weather, travel through the water cycle, and dance your way through the states of matter! A scavenger hunt highlights weather related themes in the natural world. Add on a 45 minute planetarium show, Zula Patrol: Under the Weather, $2 (special price with Wild Weather Extravaganza).
Butterfly Festival: Lepidoptera and Life Cycles
Grades: 1-5
May 20 and 21, 2010
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Time will “fly” by when you and your students explore the beautiful and fascinating world of butterflies and lifecycles! Watch live Monarchs in our butterfly sanctuary, and take an up close and personal look at how they travel through each stage of the lifecycle. Use our microscopes to see what butterfly and moth wings are REALLY made of, and metamorphose into a Lepidoptera when you make wings of your own! Learn how different animals complete their lifecycles, discover how moths and butterflies protect themselves from predators, and begin work on your very own butterfly garden!
Michigan Wildlife and Ecology: A Web of Connections
Grades 1-5
January 15 and May 14, 2010
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Explore the diversity of wildlife right in our own backyards! Handle skeletons and skins, build a food web, investigate adaptations and predator-prey relationships, and discover what’s special about the critters we find right here in Michigan!
The Three Fires of Michigan: Language and Contemporary Culture
Grades 1-8
November 12, 2009
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Step outside of the text books to sing, dance, and see the natural world in a different way with the people of the Three Fires (the Ojibwe, Bodewadami, and Odawa tribes). Sing and dance with a Native American song leader and learn language and contemporary stories about growing up on a reservation with an Ojibwe elder. Discover the significance of minerals, water, and certain animals to local tribes. Add on a 45 minute planetarium show, Stories My Ancestors Told, $2 (special price with Three Fires).
Animals of the Night
Grades 1 and up
December 15, 2009
Length: 60 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Discover the fascinating features and adaptations of many nocturnal animals including bats, flying squirrels, owls, and more. Your students will investigate hearing, sight, smell, and ecosystems, and meet live animals including bats, owls, and a few surprises. This program includes hands-on activities in the galleries as well as a 1-hour live animal presentation. Add on a 45 minute planetarium show, The Sky Tonight, $2 (special price with Animals of the Night).
Geology Rocks
Grades 2-5
November 13, 2009; January 22 & March 19, 2010
Call about opportunities for grade 6
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Dig into geology! Learn the difference between rocks and minerals, and explore different minerals using our brand new stereoscopes – you’ll make your own slides, too! Find out which minerals are hiding in everyday household objects. Learn how earthquakes happen and make your own with our Quake Shake. Discover how rock layers stack up and touch a rock that’s over two billion years old! Students will leave with the start of their very own rock collection, including one of each of the three major kinds of rocks.
Environmental Stewardship in a Changing World
Grades 6-12
April 16, 2010
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Empower your middle and high school students to explore real environmental issues in depth, along with policy solutions on small and large scales. Activities, experiments, and presentations will explore research on climate change, sustainable energy and food production, product life cycles, invasive species, and more! Students and teachers will leave with plenty of information, as well as simple projects and solutions to implement in their schools and communities. Add on a 45 minute Great Green Adventure interactive docent-led tour of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment’s Dana Building, a building renovated to green standards and located less than a block away, $2.
World History Through Archaeology
Grades 6-12
October 23, 2009 and February 12, 2010
Length: ~120 minutes
Cost per person: $6
Join archaeologists from the Museum of Anthropology and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology to explore what archaeologists do, and how they learn about prehistoric and ancient cultures. Learn to tell Neanderthal tools from Neolithic ones, Indus Valley artifacts from Egyptian ones, and find out how we know how old things are. Discover how we know what ancient people ate, when agriculture began, and even what games people played. Find out about ancient writing systems (and which scripts are on the Rosetta Stone), and leave with examples of hieroglyphs, cuneiform, and Mayan calendar notation. Plus, check out the new Archaeology! exhibit. Add on a 45 minute planetarium show, Stars of the Pharaohs, $2 (special price with World History Through Archaeology).
