William Penn Elementary - Tour of the Animal Facts Club: Where I'm From

The Museum Studies class at Moravain College took William Penn Elementary students on a tour of the "Animal Facts Club: Where I'm From" sculptural exhibit in Payne Gallery. To prepare for the tour, we created outlines and guides of information on the habitats and animals shown in the exhibit. The elementary students were placed in groups of three, and visited diffecent parts of the exhibit in stations. However, giving the tour was difficult because each station only recieved ten minutets with each group of kids.

I worked with Kaitlin Stefanski in the Piney Forest area of the exhibit. We sat on the floor with the kids and discussed the forest area, but let the wiggly kids get up and look at the toad or the snake. Also, we called them by their names every time they raised their hand to ask or answer a question (which seemed to make them like us a bit). At first we wanted to ask the kids if they had ever been in a forest, and to identify what types of animals they saw there; this worked for the first couple of groups. After that, the kids just ran over and started pointing out any animals they recognized, so Kaitlin and I just confirmed or helped them figure out which animals were in the forest scene.

Kaitlin and I had orignally planned to give facts about each animal depicted in the forest area, but we never really talked about the owl, racoon, coyote, or golden-cheeked warbler. Most of the kids were interested in the giant Houston Toad, and asked questions about what it was and wanted to know if the toad was actually that large. We didn’t get to mention too many specific facts because the kids looked bored when we did, so we just started asking them what they knew about the animals and rolled with or built on the information they provided. However, Kaitlin and I did manage to explained the relationship between the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker and the Rat Snake (predator and prey) and then asked how long it takes woodpeckers to make their hollow/home. The kids were really interested when we mentioned that it takes woodpeckers 1-3 years to build their hollow/home, and occasionally asked about the sap. Katie and I explained how the sap was a defense mechanism used by the woodpecker.

Once we covered all of the animals in the forest area, turned to the actual forest scene, which delt with forest fires. We asked kids what the difference was between a wildfire and a controlled fire (how are they started and how are they put out) and used a campfire as an example of a controlled fire). Although we didn't really get to explain everything about fores fires, we managed to explain why wildfires were bad and controlled fires were good for forests. Also, we had to explain what invasive plants are and why they were bad for forests. We asked kids if there were any benefits of forest fires, to which most said that there were not, so we prompted them to think about ecosystems (after we explained what an ecosystem was) and how animals interact with their environments (some birds need specific trees, frogs need good plants and soil or rivers, etc.) For the most part, we tried to prompt the kid into figuring out what invasive plants were by using the analogy of competition in sports (asked kids what sports they played and if they knew what competition was). Also, the kids did ask about what happened to animals during forest fires, and were surprised that animals could sense the danger of a fire and evacuate the forest.

Overall, we didn’t use too much of the information we prepared, but I think the tour went well. The kids seemed to be interested in the forest area because they recognized most of the animals and wanted to name they as soon as they saw them (usually before they even sat down). They weren’t too wiggly and seemed to be interested in answering questions about the forest fires; they also asked some weird questions (one girl asked me if people actually lived in Texas).

Click here to visit the Gallery page