Day 145: olbrich botanical garden program

Mama May I giveaway still going on! Be sure to visit the first post about the review and giveaway to get your entries in!

We had our second program at the Olbrich Botanical Garden this morning. You may remember we went last week and I wrote about the program on Day 138. Today was formatted exactly the same way so there is not as much to talk about (my critiques from the that day apply again to this one!).

I did get a few more pictures of the activities though so why not share them right!

Magnifying viewers with snake skin in them. This was a bit advanced for Sam. She didn't really understand what she was looking at, but I thought it was cool!

This was a finishing the pattern activity that was also a bit advanced for her. We have just not worked on patterns before so she didn't really get the concept. Besides their being snakes in the pictures there was no real connection or learning aspect about snakes with this activity.

This was a neat one. Some of the older kids that were there got to use the pipe cleaners to make the shapes (Sam tried a couple shapes) and then the younger kids that were there could just match the shapes that were already made to the shapes on the sheet. There was an information card on this table talking about how snakes can twist and turn into different shapes.

Sam loved this activity. The informational card on this table talked about different patterns that snakes can have on their backs. Then there were cards that the kids could use to either work on identifying shapes or play a memory game. We played memory several times!

There were two other activities that I did not get pictures of; painting wooden snakes that she got to bring home and then a playdough station for them to roll out playdough into snakes.

Then just like at the last program we did a scavenger hunt in the conservatory. Instead of looking for plants and things that were in the conservatory they had set up stakes with snake pictures on them of different colors for the kids to find. I wish they would have gone a step further and hung fake snakes up in the trees, on the ground or within the plants, but Sam loved looking for the snakes anyway.

Sam had a great time through the whole program. And by me reading all the information cards to her she learned a little bit about snakes!

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Nitty Gritty!

Some educators may think that I am being a kind of spy and should not be passing along (or stealing!) this facilities programs. But this is exactly the kind of mentality that I think holds the education field back. If one naturalist, one educator or one parent has a good idea that works great with kids that idea should be shared for everyone's benefit. There is no way for the environmental education field or any education field to grow and improve if we aren't sharing what we learn. There are some amazing schools and teachers with blogs out there that share their ideas, curriculums and lessons freely with the rest of the world. This doesn't diminish what they are doing it only enhances the entire field. I love finding ideas from other people, testing them out on my own kids and then adding to them or reinforcing that they were great ideas to begin with! Do other educators feel this way? Do you share your tricks of the trade freely? I can remember hearing from friends that are teachers that when they started a new job right out of college the previous teacher that they were replacing took all of their materials with them, forcing them to start from scratch. Why is this? Who does that benefit and don't these teachers feel at all guilty that they might be hurting the next group of students that take those classes? Hope I am not being rude, I am not in the formal education field but I just don't understand this thinking. Would love to hear both sides of this argument and learn why some people share ideas and some choose not to.

3 Comments

So they did a snake program...was there a live snake there? Talk about snake adaptations or diets? I used to have a ball python I did all my programs with. Did they mention or show pics of any WI snakes? Again, like the sloth program, I think it should be geared towards native species. Just my opinion....maybe it's too EE biased.

Posted by: Tami S | 11/23/2010 at 06:13 PM