Scavenger Hunt

During either the 1st or 2nd day of class, I usually do a scavenger hunt in our science classroom. I love this activity and its a good icebreaker. For my 5's, it is the first time they are in a science classroom in the Upper School. They were in the same science room from K-4, so its an exciting change. It gets them up and out of their seats, they find where the important items are in the classroom, and I get to see how they handle a task, if they work with a partner or prefer to work alone.

After everyone has had a chance to work on the scavenger hunt, we take our seats and go over the answers. For example, if I ask "Where is the fire extinguisher?" all the students point to it at the same time. There are a few tricky ones and its fun when they are all pointing in different directions thinking they are right! One tricky one is we have these pull down coiled up extension cords that hang from the ceilings with 3 outlets on each, we use these to plug in laptops if the battery power is low. Most kids point to the wall outlets thinking they are the ones we use for laptops, then I point up to the ceiling and they are like "Where did they come from!"

Here is the updated version that I will use in September. I used a landscape layout and each student will have half a page in their notebooks. http://www.middleschoolscience.com/scavengerhunt-isn.pdf