Custom Field Trips Grades K-6
Greenacres Arts Center customizes each field trip to accomodate the educational needs of the participants.
These are a few examples of custom-designed programs we have created for schools:
Very Hungry Caterpillar
Grade 1
Description: The life cycle of a butterfly is the topic for this field trip. Using the book by Eric Carle, the children learn about the life cycle of a butterfly, create lyrics to a song about the life cycle of a butterfly and create a model of the life cycle of a butterfly using the artistic torn-paper collage techniques Eric Carle used for the book.
Length: 1.5 hours
Standards: Visual arts, music and science
Ghost of Tom
Grade 2
Description: This field trip introduces ceremonies and traditions from other cultures or cultures that are part of the neighborhood/school culture and their impact on the culture of Ohio. Moveable marionettes in the form of a skeleton dance to a round the children have learned. Perfect for Hallowe’en and Mexican Day of the Dead celebration. Singing a round about bones rounds out the field trip.
Length: 1.5 hours
Standards: Visual arts, music, science and social studies
Anansi, the Spider
Grade 2
Description: The focus of this field trip is comparing the anatomy of spiders and insects, and the oral traditions from Ghana as told through the story of Anansi, The Spider. The children will learn the conventions of a story, make character head bands based on the characters of the story and learn how to act out and improvise movements based on the story. Children will be introduced to vocabulary words specific to drama and oral traditions as well as visual arts and music. Children will sing songs about the differences between spiders and insects and fun spider songs. The country of Ghana will be explored using the illustrations from the book and historical documentation of people, bark cloth and wood carvings of the Ashanti tribes in pictures.
Length: 2 hours
Standards: Music, life science, visual arts, English/language arts
Mixtures, Solutions and Suspensions
Grade 4
Description: Dr. Suess’ book, Bartholomew and the Obleek is the stimulus for this field trip. The children read the book and then create a mixtures (trail mix), a solution (kool aid), and Obleek (suspension). They learn the definition of each by the critical attributes each has. An alternative to creating the Obleek is to make a snow globe (also a suspension).
Length: 1.5 hours
Standards: English/language arts, visual arts, science
Secret Codes of the Underground Railroad
Grade 5
Description: Did you ever wonder how slaves made it to freedom during the time of the Civil War? Children will learn how the slaves used astronomy, geography, and the secret codes that provided them with the clues of how to escape to the North by listening to the story Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. General: Children will learn about the Underground Railroad, historical figures, terms used to describe those who worked with the URR system, the songs that slaves sang that had hidden meanings or codes, how astronomy played a part in creating the codes, and how quilts that were passed from family to family reflected escape routes through their patterns. Finally, children will create their own code song and quilt. Children will understand the importance of music and visual arts (home arts) in the development and success of the Underground Railroad system. Music: Children will learn three different songs that have hidden meanings in the lyrics that were commonly sung by field slaves. Children will create their own code song based on a familiar melody using call-response and/or stanza/chorus form.
Length: 2.5 hours
Standards: Music, visual arts, social studies science, English/language arts
Sound and Strings
Grade: 5
Description: Sound is all around us. Harnessing sound and turning it into music is easy to do when you understand a few facts about sound: 1) It travels in all directions; 2) It travels in waves; 3) It can be high or low or anywhere in between; 4). It can be loud or soft or anywhere in between; 5) Sound can last a long or short time or anywhere in between. Today we will learn a little about string theory, make a ‘stringed’ instrument called the Jackolin, and learn to play a song on the stringed instrument using mathematics (dividing by fractions)
Length: 2 hours
Standards: Music, science and mathematics
Chefs and Clefs (formerly Fractional Pizza – equivalent fractions)
Grade 6
Description: Music and cooking may not seem to be related but they both use math and equivalent fractions. On this field trip, children learn about rhythm and beat and play various percussion instruments demonstrating sub-dividing the beat. The children learn to reduce a recipe as they make a treat to enjoy.
Length 2.0 hours
Standards: music and mathematics
Martin’s Big Words
Grade 3
Description: The powerful words of Dr. Martin Luther King coupled with peaceful protests helped fuel the Civil Rights movement. His words conveyed the message of the old hymns. The children will understand what the movement was about through subtle demonstration. Children will hear the story of Martin and his love of the use of words. Children will discover how the lyrics of hymns helped direct the words of a movement. Children will create their own “protest” based on something meaningful to them creating new lyrics to familiar melodies and visual representations.
Length: 2 hours
Standards: Visual arts, music, social studies, English/language arts
Waste Not! Want Not!
Grade 1
Description: Understanding the importance of recycling and what we can do to help preserve our planet are the two main themes. Taking the concept of ‘recycling’ one step further, the children do two projects that demonstrate how recycling occurs in music (same melodies-different lyrics) and visual arts (reusing a medium) by making paper using recycled materials. Discovery, the creative process and the actual making of new from old and reusing materials to create new/modified/adaptations are intrinsic in the lesson.
Length: 2 hours
Standards: Visual arts, music, science
Tick Tock Around the Clock
Grade 1
Time is a unit of measure in math and in music. Time in music is represented by time signature, tempo, and beat. Music is divided by time (measures, type of note); We tell time using hours; hours are divided in half, quarters, fives, minute, seconds. Telling time with a clock is sometimes hard to visualize so we dance the clock. A large clock is placed on the floor and children are given a time card. Children dance around the clock singing as they travel ‘clockwise’ until the caller calls out a number. Whomever is hold that ‘time card’ must run to the spot on the clock and say “Tick, tock, tick tock, it’s ? o’clock! If the child runs to the incorrect spot, he or she is out! Children will design and make their own clocks with moveable hands for practice.
Length: 1.5 hours
Standards: visual arts, music, mathematics
