Sunday, October 16, 2011

Museum Scavenger Hunt Book

We have several museum trips coming up, thanks to free and reduced homeschool days, and I love using scavenger hunts to help focus the kids' energy when we are there. However, I do not love carrying a clipboard around, or trying to write against a wall or knee, or searching through the backpack for a pen. My solution? A book! I printed pre-made scavenger hunts from the Monterey Bay Aquarium website (many museums have them listed under the teacher resources, or you could make them yourself from pictures from the website) and bound them in a sturdy chipboard book, sort of following Angry Chicken's directions here. Instead of stapling the pages together, I folded each page in half and glued them back to back. Then I glued the first and last pages to the covers which made end pages and at the same time, secures all of the pages to the book.
This allowed the whole page to fold down for viewing, and the floating spine enables you to fold the whole book backwards. The hard chipboard covers (I took mine from the back of a sketchpad) provide a perfect surface for writing.
To keep track of the elusive pen, I added an elastic loop between the back page and the cover. To add extra hold insurance, I glued it down and then covered the edge with gaffer's tape.
That's all there is to it! Now I have a pint sized book of fun to focus our attention and our energy, and maybe discover something we hadn't noticed before. Now if I could only make our lunch bags and water bottles pint sized...

3 comments:

  1. What a fun idea! Enjoy your trip to the museum :)

    Reply
  2. Wow. Just, wow. You could totally sell those in the gift shop of the museums.

    Reply
  3. How absolutely clever! You could market it.

    Reply