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Field Trips
Are you looking to engage your students in a deeper understanding of science concepts aligned with Next Generation Science Standards? Field trips are more than a “vacation” from school. Coupled with meaningful and relevant lesson objectives, a field experience can engage students in learning and leave a lasting impression for continued science curiosity. Discovery Cube field trip programs offer teachers and students a way to explore, discover, and practice scientific process skills through hands-on exhibits, investigations, and immersive experiences. Whether you visit our Orange County or Los Angeles science center or join us at Discovery Cube’s Ocean Quest in Newport Beach, we have a highly engaging, grade specific program to excite the curiosity of all students.
Grade-Specific Science Demonstrations
As part of your field trip experience to Discovery Cube Orange County or Discovery Cube Los Angeles, your class will participate in a 15-minute, California Science Content Standards-aligned demonstration. All demonstrations are interactive stage presentations focusing on relevant topics for your grade level.
Click on your grade level below for demonstration details:
Fun with Colors
Students will learn about colors and color mixing by reading Mouse Paint and creating their own color wheel using balls of dough.
A Perfect Fit
Students will explore the basic necessities required for both plant and animal life, looking especially at survival in Southern California and contrasting that with extreme environments. Plants and animals have specific physical adaptations that allow them to survive, and thrive, in specific environments. Using a “bed of nails”, students will learn about features or shapes of feet (or hooves) that help an animal to walk on snow, sand, mud, clay, or hard-packed dirt.
Call of the Wild
Students will play a matching game while learning about physical features that animal parents share with their babies, all leading to a discussion about what the babies need to survive. Students will also learn about sound, as they compare the call and response of the parent and baby, while learning how to mimic the animal sounds.
Our Changing Earth
Students will use the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Science on a Sphere to view world-wide images and animations created by scientists, which showcase earthquakes and tectonic plate movement. Students will also learn how one natural event (such as an earthquake) can trigger additional natural and unnatural events (such as a tsunami and a radiation leak) – while brainstorming solutions to protect the Earth and our homes.
Predicting Forces
To learn about Newton’s First Law of Motion, students will observe balanced and unbalanced forces. They will also observe and predict motion patterns caused by ramps and even a bowling ball pendulum!
Earthquake!
Students will learn about earthquakes – from the shape of S-waves and P-waves, to how earthquakes can quickly damage buildings, to where on Earth earthquakes commonly occur. Utilizing world-maps created by scientists, students will also learn that over a long period of time and after many earthquakes happen near the same area, the shape of the land will change.
Sphere of Influence: A Volcano’s Global Impact
Students will use the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Science on a Sphere to view world-wide images and animations created by scientists. By focusing on a volcanic eruption (an event in the geosphere), students will discover ways an eruption can impact the atmosphere, life (biosphere), and water (hydrosphere).
Surviving the Big One: Seismic Engineering
Students will work in groups to design and construct a model wall that will remain standing after an earthquake. Groups will compete to build the least expensive wall that will bring in the largest revenue (and be the most aesthetically pleasing).
Science on the Water – An Unforgettable Adventure!
Explore the ocean like never before at Discovery Cube’s Ocean Quest campus in Newport Beach, California! Your 3-hour educational field trip experience will include a boat tour on Newport Bay, an exploration of hands-on marine environment-focused activities, and participation in an investigation of the marine life at the pier. These hands-on, highly interactive field trips are aligned in grade bans (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12) and based on the California Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
Complete our Inquiry Form or call 714.913.5030 to book your next field trip.