Homeschool Chat: About Field Trips

I have gone to all sorts of field trips over the years – ones that I put together for my own family, ones that were with friends, ones that were with local co-ops, and e-loop field trips (where one list member sets it up and offers it to the “public” through a homeschool email list). All of them are enjoyable.

We love getting out so much that we joke about being car-schoolers. I can’t tell you how many of our school books we have read while “trapped” in a vehicle on the way to some sort of social or educational outing. We even like doing school on the go once or twice a week when we have errands to run. Since we haven’t been able to take a lot of field trips with the babies, these car-schooling days have served as a great way to add extra sunshine in to our schedule and keep the cabin fever away.

There are times in the past that I have enjoyed the “just our family” field trips the best (because we have the full attention of the guide and can quietly learn without distraction)… but other times, it is great to be with a group. It depends on the nature of the trip as to how many people is too many. A favorite BIG field trip we have taken was riding the Rusk-Palestine Texas State Railroad with a very large Houston Yahoo Group which had thousands of members. I think we had nearly a hundred or more people on that train ride.

Without doing your research, it can be difficult to find other homeschool families in your area to get out and go with. This is one reason a lot of moms feel fragmented and alone. It makes field tripping lonely if you can’t find some friends to be social with and enjoy the journey together – even if it is just for an outing each month or so.

Thankfully, we have quite a few homeschooling groups in our area in every direction (plenty of peeps to field trip with). Most of these groups offer at least one field trip a month, a mom’s fellowship night, park days each week, and some sort of teen get together.

Getting around with little ones is tricky because you have to factor in naps, snacks, and potty training. We have been kind of out of the loop with busy, outside-the-home activities for a few years with the addition of two babies, but we are getting back in the saddle now that they are fully acclimated to long car rides. {In fact, both the little ones love to get out and go. The tiny one stands by the door and points and says, “Bye Bye?” and he’s constantly bringing me his shoes to put them on. The three year old often asks me to take him to the book store. Lately, that’s his favorite place in the entire world.}

I’m really looking forward to adding more field trips back in this year.

Finding places to go is easy. I keep a homeschool field trip list in my dayplanner with a ‘wish list’ of field trips we are interested in taking and add to it when I hear of new places we find interesting. I also purchased a few books about the areas I have lived that include fun activities for you to do around town with your children. While we were doing unit studies, we also found great ideas in our curriculum book that were exactly on topic for what we were studying at the time.

I have always documented field trips on my blog – since way back in 2005 – and will continue to do so… and I encourage you to check out the Homeschool Post on the last Friday of the month where we do a field trip link up for homeschool bloggers. I’m adding my links there, too… slowly.

I’d love to hear about where you get your field trip ideas, what your top five favorite field trips were, and any tips you have on the subject.

As for us, this year we are closing up the school year with a trip to the Houston Downtown Aquarium… and hopefully next year we will get to visit Medieval Times in Dallas since we’ll be studying that period of history.

Other than that, it’s all still a blank teacher planner, awaiting mama’s pencil!

I’m ready to get out and GO in 2012-2013.

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