Dear Ed:
We are a small science museum and try to keep our school group
experiences very open ended. We follow a model that I know many other
museums follow. We welcome our groups with a 15-minute introduction
to orient them to the museum and to the focus of the exhibit. We try
to keep the orientation fun and interactive by calling up many
volunteers and using kinesthetic activities to get all kids
physically engaged right away.

During warm months, we hold the orientation outside. Other times, we
just have kids sit on the floor out of the exhibit area for the
orientation.

Then we turn them loose and let them explore the exhibit freely.  We
provide small "lab books" for school groups to use at various
exhibits. A lab book has a few directed questions for kids to answer
to keep them focused. Teachers like these but the kids tend to leave
them scattered all over the museum.

I'm not sue if this is what you are looking for. Hope it helps!

Jessica Ruskin
Program Director
--
Explorit Science Center
3141 5th Street
P.O. Box 1288
Davis, CA 95617
(530) 756-0191
FAX (530) 756-1227
http://www.explorit.org

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