Field Trip Project Ideas
Get
the most out of your trip to Kaleidoscope with these valuable classroom
activities for before and after your visit.
Activity Ideas for Before Your Visit
Through the silver doors and down the winding road you enter the magical
world of Kaleidoscope — a place where students tickle their senses and
delight in the wonder of their own imaginations. Before your Kaleidoscope
visit, stimulate your student's senses while complementing your objectives.
Curriculum Ties: Math, Science, Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking,
Viewing and Art
Grade Level: K-6 (ages 5-12)
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Create
All of the scrap materials used in Kaleidoscope come from Hallmark`s manufacturing. The students are invited to use these materials to create imaginative art projects. Before your class attends Kaleidoscope, have a class discussion on recycling and what the students can do to make our planet a better place to live. Have students plan and implement classroom recycling efforts. Eliminate paper waste by using both sides of classroom work papers, recycle the papers with newspapers once they have no more useable life. Encourage your students to think of clever things to make with a clean milk container from their lunch. Be creative and set your sights on reduce, reuse and recycle.
"At Kaleidoscope I hope . . ."
To play "At Kaleidoscope I hope. . ." you will need a small bean bag or beanie animal and have your children sit in a circle. Start the game with a statement like, "I hope the bus is on time the day we go to Kaleidoscope." Then you could have a discussion about how you feel when you are late to an event. Now toss the bean toy to a student. They say, "I hope . . ." and finish the statement about Kaleidoscope. If the child has been here before they might say, "I hope I get to make a puzzle while I`m at Kaleidoscope." (If it is a child who hasn`t been here before, you might pick up on some misconceptions or fears that you can address.) Have the students toss the bean toy to each other so that each student completes a "I hope" statement. After the activity, have your students journal about what they heard and learned. After the visit to Kaleidoscope, have the children journal again and compare their pre- and post-visit writings!
Classroom Quilt Session
Before your class attends any of the quilt sessions, talk with your students about projects in which everyone participates. Explain that while at Kaleidoscope, each child will create his or her own self-portrait on a piece of paper that will become part of the class quilt. When at Kaleidoscope, encourage them to take their time and color in the entire sheet of paper. By each person contributing his or her self-portrait, your classroom will have a colorful quilt that everyone will enjoy!
Aunt Flossie`s Hats
Before joining us for a session revolving around "Aunt Flossie`s Hats", provide books by author Elizabeth Fitzgerald Howard for the children to look through. Lead the children in a discussion about their family histories and have the children write a story about a part of theirs. Then the children can make pictures for their family histories when they are at Kaleidoscope.
Cuckoo
Talk about folktales before coming to a "Cuckoo" session at Kaleidoscope. Cuckoo is a traditional Mayan tale that explains how one cuckoo bird overcomes her faults and saves the seeds from a fire to help her friends. Have your student’s research other folktales and then try to write an original folktale about another bird or animal.
Found Alphabet
"Found Alphabet" is full of photographs of objects made with recycled materials. Before attending this session, lead a discussion about reduce, re-use, and recycle. Have your students choose one small piece of “trash” and glue it to a piece of paper. Their piece of trash could be a gum wrapper, pencil nub or other non-perishable item. Glue the object to a piece of paper and use the object as a starting point to draw an invented item. (The gum wrapper could become the body of an airplane.) Now have them write a poem about the object they created.
Snowmen at Night
Before joining us for a "Snowmen at Night" session, have your students come up with a list of their favorite winter activities. Together, you and your class can then make a graph of the most popular ones. You may want to have the children write a paragraph describing their favorite winter activity before they come to Kaleidoscope and create pictures for their words.
Grandpa Gazillion`s NumberYard
Most of us have a favorite or "lucky" number! Before coming to a "Grandpa Gazillion`s NumberYard" session, have your students write theirs on a sheet of paper. Be sure they write the number large to fill most of the space on the paper. Then, using their number as the starting point, have the children turn it into a character or object. Once the drawing is completed, write a description of what their number became.
Activity Ideas for After Your Visit
Extend the Kaleidoscope experience into your classroom with some of these activities.
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