Today was a great day! The second graders had a field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum! I've never been there before today, so it was a new experience for me too! When we arrived we explored the main floor. When I saw the Butterfly Room I basically told the students we needed to go in there, because it seemed so cool! (they didn't really have a choice...) We spent around 10 minutes just hanging in the butterfly wing looking at them all and hoping they would land on us. One of my students and I walked around with our arms out in hopes of having one land on us! One landed on him, but not me :( At 10:30 we went to a Butterfly Program where the students learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. This tied in perfectly because we are in our insect unit for science! Some of the students caught on that our Painted Lady Larvae will turn to butterflies, but some did not! So it is still a mystery to some of my students!
After lunch we had about an hour to explore the museum. We spent our time on the rest of the first floor that we didn't see at the beginning, including the Rain Forest exhibit, Streets of Old Milwaukee, and Bugs Alive! My favorite on this floor was definitely the Streets of Old Milwaukee. It was so cool! It was like we traveled back in time and were walking along the street. The students seemed to like the Rain Forest the best, because of all the different animals throughout the exhibit! One of my students saw an animal called the Great Potoo, and told us that he saw a "Great Potato" animal. When Mrs. Palmer and myself saw the actual name of it, we couldn't help but laugh at what he called it. We also had a total teacher moment and said, "Well, he's using the first and last letter and filling in a word he knows!"
On the second floor we saw all of the Native American exhibits, and I had many proud teacher moments! In Social Studies the students are learning about United States history. So as we were walking through the exhibit I was testing the students if they remembered different things they learned in class (ex: what kind of Indians live in teepees, what were bison and buffalo used for, etc.) It was awesome to hear students getting my answers right, because that means they are retaining the information that I teach them!
On the bus back I sat next to one of my students. We spent the majority of the time playing hangman, and it was rather difficult when the words he was using were spelled wrong. But I still did pretty well! Another thing I noticed was that kids still make those paper fortune tellers. I used to make those when I was in elementary school! I had no idea they were still popular today (I attached a photo for whoever doesn't remember these!). I also did not realize how tiring today was until I got on the bus. I totally crashed on the way back and got so tired! Keeping track of a group of students in a busy museum definitely takes the energy out of you!
When we got back to school we had time for a small science lesson. As a class, we observed the mealworms and painted lady larvae. After whole class observation, I had the students predict what they were going to change into. Some got the prediction right on the painted lady larvae, but no one got the correct answer for the mealworms (they turn into beetles). Overall, it was an amazing day! The museum was so fun with my students, and I definitely want to go back!