5904

Science Museum Hunt -11yr- Learn & Play

March 2003

Keara in White Lake, Michigan

Honorable Mention

This year for my daughter's 11 th birthday we went to CranBrooke Science Museum( our local science museum.My first thought was to do a treasure hunt in one room of the museum.Instead I thought I'd utilize the whole museum. I did a scavenger hunt/treasure hunt combined.

First off I called ahead of time to see if they had any special group rates or planned activities that day Thankfully they did. They gladly sent me various schuldues of the activities planned for the day. I planned our activities around and encorpated some of the museums activies within our hunt. Obviously, I required a few parents to remain with their kids..which many had as much fun as the kids ended up having. We ended up doing a mixed theme of sorts.

They made brown paper grab bags that the museum had already planned bonus! After they finished those they started off to get their home made maps I made to direct them through the museum for the hunt .I was hoping to encourage the kids to learn to ask for help, use their thinking skills, and better yet learn to use a map.  Who would of known learning could be fun? As they used the map to navigate from place to place.I made clues such as , When in this room you will find the Big and Little Dipper..  ..there you find your next clue.

Which ended up being in the Planetriuam. From there they where directed to the next project ( that just so happen the museum had already had planned) They made binoculars using a pair of toilet paper rolls with green or blue plastic wrap over the ends. These where then used within the hunt.After awhile they where directed from room to room through the museum, looking for clue's as well as learning about science along the way. Various points they had to attend a classroom for a presentation on the rainforest animals.

When that was done after completeing a worksheet to receive their next clue( I asked 10 questions of stuff the teacher covered and the under line letter of the answer's  formed the location of the next clue and prize.The prizes ended up being rainforest animals stickers, fliers,do dad's ( got from orential trading company) coloring, activity sheets I found and printed for free off the internet. In the museum they had a bug exhibit that I took advantage off by again having them figure out bug questions to finally find their next prizes and next clue prizes ended up being lady bugs, butterflies, and flower eraser's and pencil's..which I ended up finding at my local dollar store. The hunt lasted believe it or not over 3-1/2 hours long.

By the time they where done they saw the whole muesum, did 3 craft prjects,watch the planetriuam, saw 1 demstration, saw one movie, got to play on the  museum computers, learned a few things and had a whole lot of fun.The museum manager had so much fun in watching us he assured me that they liked the concept so much they plan on looking into offering this to other's in the future. I had arranged after the museum for everyone to go back to my house to open gifts and eat cake and ice cream but the manager was kind enough to offer their arts and crafts room for this  at no charge can't beat that! I highly recommend this to anyone , boy or girl exspectally for a mixed sex party. I literally only ended up spending $53.00 for 5 hours of fun and prizes.( this covered 10 kids)

Also, if your child is younger you could actually do a younger themed version of this party and get them interested in science early by using their favorite  TV shows as a guideline..such as Dora the Explorer, Blue's Clue's, Zoom a Foo, or any of the many other shows that’s popular right now.www.nickjr.com or www.pbskids.org has a ton of free printable and activity sheets available..or you can always find one coloring book of your desired theme and produce  many copies to hand out to the kids in attendance.  Watch out  next year I am already in the planning stage for a early spring trip to the zoo birthday party.

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