Focused Field Trips | 180-Minute

Availability
September 11 – November 20 and March 4 – May 23

Fees for 180-Minute focused field trips
$400 + free admission

Maximum group size
30 students
Note: participation in this program requires 6 adult chaperones/class

Animal Behavior Field Study (4th-6th grade)

Our most in-depth field-trip experience! In this three-hour immersion, students take on the role of wildlife biologists, recording the behaviors of our bears, wolves and lemurs using professional tools and equipment. Afterwards, data, photographs, and observations are used to build student-driven websites that allow them to share their findings and continue to access the information throughout the school year. This program comes with pre- and post-visit activities that help strengthen the connection between in-class curriculum and your field trip.

Note: Completed from start to finish, this program fulfills NC fourth grade competency goal 1 and fifth grade competency goal 4 for science.

Click here to see the webpages designed during previous Animal Behavior Field Studies.

Sailboat Physics (5th-7th grade) - Available Fall 2008

Replace your current forces and motion curriculum of stopwatches, balls and ramps with our newest three-hour immersion, Sailboat Physics. Students will use PASCO Dataloggers and laptops to collect information and analyze how forces affect the motion of model sail cars. Next, your class will have private access to the Museum's 5,000 square-foot saiboat pond and remote-controlled boats to test concepts further. Afterwards, students will watch how sail car racers put these physics concepts to use in competition before we explore how the same forces affect the velocity and acceleration of our model sail cars.

Wetland Ecology Experience (5th-8th grade) - Available Fall 2008

Spend the day as limnologists in this three-hour immersion studying the wetland ecosystem. Use real scientific tools to collect water quality data and identify organisms that live in the water. Then incorporate your findings into an ongoing study of the health of our wetland.