 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
How the Hunts Work
How Our Scavenger Hunts Can Fit Your Curriculum Raves Reviews from Delighted Educators Kids Hunt Locations Camp Excursions Contact Us 
|
Teachers Turn to Watson Adventures to Help Kids Explore
Museums and Historic Locations for Educational Fun
 Since 1999, thousands of school children have explored some of America’s best museums and history-packed neighborhoods on Watson Adventures Field Trip Scavenger Hunts. Our hunts are designed to accomplish several objectives:• Get adults and kids working together on a shared adventure, whether it is with teachers or chaperones. • Pose questions that spur teamwork and discovery without requiring previous knowledge—but providing many opportunities for learning along the way. • Introduce young minds to the breadth of a museum or historic location so that each hunter gets the chance to discover what most intrigues him or her. • Spur curiosity so that students are eager to learn more and explore further in the classroom and on their own. Dozens of schools have turned to us for fun, educational hunts. See a list of some of them. The hunts are appropriate for age seven and up, with special versions for teens. We can handle groups large and small—more than once, for example, we have had hundreds of students hunting simultaneously at such museums as the American Museum of Natural History. Our hunts are popular with camp groups, too. Learn more about staging a scavenger hunt for campers. How the Hunts Work On teams, hunters follow directions on clue sheets that guide them to specific locations, such as galleries in a museum or blocks in a neighborhood. At each spot they must decipher the clues to find something in the vicinity that provides an answer to a question. For example, on our Museum of Natural Hysteria Hunt, directions guide your team into the Hall of North American Forests to answer this question: • Find a giant slice of “Mark Twain”with more than a thousand rings. What year was “he” born? Answer: 550 AD, marked at the center point of a slice of the “Mark Twain Tree,” a giant Redwood tree. Take another example: Our Secrets of Central Park Scavenger Hunt reveals the hidden history and unusual works of art in the park. One question leads you to the Bethesda Terrace for this question: • Around the corner from a Wise guy usually seen with potato chips, what “Jack” nearly gets swept away? Answer: Near a sculpture of an owl, you can spot a witch whose broom nearly swipes a jack o’ lantern. No previous knowledge is necessary—just sharp minds, open eyes and good teamwork. Students must actively engage with exhibits or their environment, while discovering that different members of the team have different talents and discoveries to contribute. Team members must stick together and work together. Adult chaperones may be advised for each team, depending on the hunt location and the age of the hunters. The hunt MC (master of ceremonies) and assistants won’t be following or leading you, but will check in with you along the hunt route to make sure all is well. The best part is that the students must actively engage with their environment—and educate themselves along the way. The objective of the hunt is not to give an in-depth understanding of a msueum or neighborhood, but rather to pique curiosity and make students eager to learn more on their own or back in the classroom. Most hunts require 90 minutes of actual hunting time. When teams reach the finish line (which is usually the same as the starting point), Watson Adventures staffers collect and score the results, hand out the answers and announce the winners. Back to the top  How Our Scavenger Hunts Can Fit Your Curriculum How can teachers make the best use of Watson Adventures Scavenger Hunt? Our hunts offer the opportunity to... • Provide a field trip in a fun but structured environment. The game prompts students to scrutinize signs, exhibits and clues that reveal important and often hidden aspects of anything from paintings to historic buildings (depending on whether you choose a museum hunt or a hunt in an outdoor location). • Develop critical thinking and sequencing skills. Students must follow directions, pay attention to the wording of clues and work together to navigate the hunt route. There’s no passive learning on one of our hunts—the students are actively doing and thinking the entire time. • Stimulate students with cooperative learning in the form of team-building activities. You can create teams ahead of time and even pre-assign roles to team members. For example, one student can be the navigator, another can be the recorder for the team’s answers, another can be the organizer who keeps the team on track, others can be readers who make sure that the team is paying attention to the details of each clue. • Appeal to the different learning styles of your students. Those who lean toward bodily-kinesthetic intelligence will enjoy learning by doing in the hands-on exhibits in a science museum hunt. Students can use linguistic, logical or spatial intelligence to solve puzzles that require careful reading, reasoning and observation. • Integrate curriculum with real-life experiences. Students are often told to make text to world connections: by seeing the actual historical artifacts in a museum—such as dinosaur bones, suits of armor, portraits of famous people—or visiting places where history actually happened, students get a richer understanding of the material in their textbooks. Art clases and Science classes clearly would relate to our hunts in art museums and science museums. But other subjects can find the hunts just as useful. For instance... Language Arts and English as a Second Language students enrich their reading comprehension as they pay close attention to hunt clues that use word play, metaphors, similes and other playful forms of figurative language. The hunters will pick up new vocabulary as they peruse exhibits, signs and the hunt questions. History, Social Studies and Foreign Language classes can explore new aspects of different cultures in museum hunts or visit neighborhoods and buildings where history happened on our outdoor hunts in such places as the Freedom Trail, Greenwich Village (in New York), near the White House in Washington, and near Independence Hall in Philadelphia.  Math classes will discover that the hunt questions require logic and reasoning—and sometimes a bit of arithmetic. Teachers can also set students math-related tasks in conjunction with the hunt: Students can be assigned to record the time needed to answer each question and later graph the results and chart the average time it took. Teams can compare graphs with each other. We can also provide you with all of the scores for correlation with other aspects of team performance. Physical Education and Health Education classes will of course benefit from hunts that encourage walking. You can also choose hunt locations that supplement aspects of the curriculum. For instance, the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago all feature exhibits about the human body, which can be underscored on our hunts. • Provide opportunities to extend the benefits of the field trip back in the classroom. For example, teachers who have taken their classes on Watson Adventures hunts have used some of the following exercises after the outing: * Students can be assigned to create vocabulary lists based on what they learned during the hunt, or we can help you create a list of terms that will come up on the hunt. * Students can create a newspaper, newsletter, PowerPoint presentation or report about on some exhibit or place they found particularly compelling on the hunt. * Students can write reflections on the field trip experience: What did their team do well? What could their team have done better? What questions were they proud of answering? What part of the hunt did they enjoy the most? If they could change one thing about a specific exhibit or place visited, what would it be and why? What did a particular exhibit or location tell them about the lives of the people from that culture or era? These suggestions just scratch the surface of what an adept educator can do on a field trip with Watson Adventures. After ten years of providing hunts for students, we’re still learning new ways students can benefit from our hunts! Back to the top Rave Reviews from Delighted Educators  “We had a blast. Everyone has had so many positive things to say about the hunt. You guysreally did a great job! I have already recommended your company to several people and I plan on doing something like it again. Thanks for all of your help!” —Georgetown Middle High School, Massachusetts “The kids had a great time—they were all very excited about being in NYC too. We will do this again next year for 9th grade.” —The Pingry School, New York “The kids and the parents LOVED the hunt this year! It was very well organized and appropriately challenging. So many of our field trips are passive, in terms of the students following and listening to docents and guides. The hunt provided us an activity that was interactive and challenging, and the students were able to learn about the city, its history, its architecture, and its residents. Watson Adventures has been professional and accommodating. The ease of scheduling, the quality of the hunts, and the positive feedback from students support my recommendation.” —Emily Sigman, Poolesville High School Magnet, Pennsylvania Back to the top |