Morning at the Museum

I don't know where last week went!   I'd been out sick on Thursday and Friday so I felt a little off my game on Monday. Even though my wonderful assistant teacher led the class perfectly and the kiddos were ready to go when I returned, I still felt like I was playing catch up for most of the week.  We had a lot going on between assessments (we're nearing the end of the 2nd quarter), a field trip, and preparing for a big event at our school next week.  Plus the sickness seemed to spread throughout the class so we had between 2 and 6 kiddos out every day, poor little guys.

Nevertheless, we managed to get a lot done, including a field trip to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to do "research" for our upcoming Museum Exhibit Night.  Basically, for this annual event each class prepares an exhibit based on their current unit of study, and then we invite families to come to the "opening" of our school-wide museum.  My class (along with another 1st grade class) is preparing a map of the world as a culmination of our geography unit.  We are building the map on our bulletin board and will add labels, animals from each continent, cardinal directions, a map legend, and posters with information about each continent and ocean.

Kiddos on the metro*

I feel very fortunate to be at a school that is so close to fabulous museums and other cultural institutions.  Since our school is right near the metro and the Smithsonian museums are free, these trips are cheap and relatively easy to organize.  As daunting as it may seem to take 45 6-year-olds on the metro, we typically take at least 2 trips to the museums each year.  Of course, we get plenty of chaperones and carefully plan our trips, but I've always had a great experience.  (One big tip I've learned is that if you get on the front car of the metro, the driver can see you and will make sure the doors stay open long enough for everyone to get on and off.)

As a Pre-K teacher I found that my kiddos did much better when we had a focused goals for a trip and stayed at a site only for a short time.  Whenever possible, it also helped if the teachers did not have a group of kiddos so we could rotate and assist parent chaperones as needed.  It turns out that this works really well for first graders too.  We organized this trip so that the kiddos had 30 minutes in the mammals hall and 30 minutes in the oceans hall.  For each hall, they had certain things they needs to look for with their group.  Each group had a clipboard to record the information they learned so we can refer back to it next week.


I actually spent this trip at our "homebase" watching the jackets (downside of doing a trip in January), but the kiddos seemed to have a great time and gathered a lot of good information to add to our exhibit.  More on the animals they are making soon...

* This picture was actually from 2011.  While we were on the metro this time I got caught up talking with the lovely woman next to me about our school and the kiddos so I didn't get to take any picts.