Field+Trips+and+Activities+Done+Outside

Ideas for field trips (and opinions of them) and activities from outside sources

In a nutshell: This is essentially a **game of tag** for several classes of students at a time. Players are given roles of **herbivores, omnivores,** or **carnivores** (or even "disease", "the human factor", etc.). As a predator tags one of its prey, the prey loses one of his/her "lives" in the form of a ticket or chip, and would be out of the game after all the tickets are surrendered. However, all players must find water (and the herbivores must find plant food), which is represented by other tickets or paper-punch devices that were previously scattered around the playing area (a wooded area works best). At the end of the playing time, students can analyse their individual results to make conclusions about **population dynamics**, limitations of ** models ** to imitate natural processes, **limiting factors** that most impacted the survival of a species, ** survival strategies ** that are most successful, **etc**. Not surprisingly, setting up the water/plant food stations takes the most preparation. I prefer to scatter tickets for this purpose, since my students play the game in a wooded area that is part of a public park, and paper punches may be taken away. Explaining the game and assigning the roles to several classes of students can also be difficult and time consuming, and you will need several staff to help supervising, enforcing boundaries and emphasizing safety, and trouble-shooting while the students run around and chase each other, but the game is very memorable and **fun**! Some other variations on the web: [] [] []
 * Predator and Prey game** (F.I.)