I am curious as to how many field trips you all plan on a usual basis? We are going on our first offiicial field trip that was planned by our home school group today and my little guy is so excited! After being frustrated at his level of unhappiness with school I was wondering if I planned more field trips and made lessons around them, if that would ease some of his distain for his school work.
I plan very few formal field trips, but that's just me. I did take the three guys I do science with to the Neil Armstrong Museum when we studied astronomy. And I do like to take the kids to one school performance of Ballet Met in Columbus each year. Which reminds me, I need to call because I want them to see "Midsummer Night's Dream" next month! But that's about it!
We used to take three or four a year, but not as part of a group. For example, we'd go to a local mineral museum, a natural history museum, and similar places.
This year we have gone to a couple of museums and we have gone to see two plays (our 3rd is tomorrow). Next year when I only have one that I will be hsing I plan on doing a few more.
I don't really plan field trips. They tend to just happen. But we take all the chances we get. I think field trips can be a powerful way to motivate learning. The key is the preparation and follow up.
We had a lot planed this year but we have been too busy. DS will actually officially be a 5th grader at the end of this month and then we take a month off. I am thinking about trying to work some of our trips in during this time. Some of our trips just happen, lfor example we may just get in the car and drive to Jersey. Last weekend we found ourselves at the Museum of Natural History and the Air and Space Museum.
We don't have alot of stuff close by to do field trips to so they tend to happen in groups for us when we travel. The places we visit don't always go with what we have been learning in school, but I think the kids learn so much from just about any trip. Sometimes I try extra hard to work it into school, but not always.
We don't really plan field trips until the week or 2 before we are going to take one. There is tons for us to do around here but it is all so expensive and we have a very limited budget so we don't take that many.
I don't necessarily plan them as part of my planning process. If I know we'll be talking about something in particular, I'll put in the back of my mind that I plan to take a trip to _____ because it's related to the topic. There's no set number. I also do whatever trips pop up in HS groups that may or may not tie into what we're doing. I'd say probably 1 a month, at least?
We don't really PLAN field trips, usually. Some kinda just fall into our laps. I try to do a lot of fun ones too - like Thursday we're going to a Chik-Fil-A and taking a tour of the kitchen, they do a schpiel on health and nutrition, etc. And the kids will get a free kids meal. Last fall we went to a local Alpaca farm and learned all about them (which was timed perfectly for the end of our unit that included "Secret of the Andes"). We will probably do some touring of Old City Philadelphia this year b/c we're doing American History this year. We go to the zoo at least once. I hope to go to a few hands on museums. My parents take the kdis places too, I always make them get brochures! And sometimes I've been able to check the website out to find about special things they give teachers for the field trips there. So cool.
I plan for fieldtrips as we move through the school year. Some fieldtrips are part of our vacations and some I plan around a lesson. But I never plan them far in advance.
Call in advance to see whether any large groups are expected. It's a much nicer experience if you're one of fewer people there because the staff like to interact.
Thank you all for your answers!! We had a lovely time today on our field trip! We both are a little refreshed after actually taking a breather and just enjoying each other. I also want to thank you all for everything you post on here. I try to read as much as I can so I can think about how different situations may or may not apply to us. I have learned so much just from reading some of the older posts! Thanks!!:lol:
We go on a field trip almost every week. I take advantage of the ones planned by our local homeschooling group and then also plan ones that fit with what we are studying. For example last week the local museum had a wonderful Genghis Khan exhibit and Lesson 21 in SOTW Middle Ages that we were studying was about him too, so we went and learned a lot. We do the free days at the Denver Zoo, take hikes to find things we are learning about in science, and etc. We also take them to free classical music concerts at a local church once a month and they each get to attend a play at least once a year. I have field trip report forms the kids fill out afterwards and have been pleased by all that they have been learning. It also keeps them very excited about homeschooling and learning in general.
I try to arrange maybe three or four - I'd love it to be once a month, but.... Yesterday we went to the Orphan Train Museum - one of only two such museums in the country! The volunteers who work there are decendants of the train riders, so they can tell some personal stories. There are pictures of the train stations that were whistle stops, and a huge mural that depicts one such stop (fictitious, but pretty accurate). There are some of the children's clothes on display in glass cases, some with the little numbered tags that identified the children. Quite a few pictures of train riders and the parents who took them home. One of the more intriguing facts was that a lot of the children were Jewish, and a lot of the parents were Cajuns who spoke no English; commonly they thought that the indenture papers they signed were the adoption, but it was discovered many many years later that some of the riders had never been legally adopted. The volunteer staff said ours were the best-behaved kids they had seen, and actually gave the kids a round of applause! There's a little "village" there, too, which is made up of very old buildings (a church, a doctor's office, a mud-and-moss house, a two-room country school building, a very old general merchandise store, and some houses) which were gathered and placed there to demonstrate what an old-time village might have looked like. One of the buildings in the group was as much as 250 years old. We had a nice picnic lunch on the grounds and the kids played for awhile, then we went to another museum a few blocks away which has a collection of Indian artifacts, and a miscellaneous collection of barber shop accoutrements, musical instruments, Mardi Gras memorabilia, and old house/home implements of various ages; a fabulous doll collection with several doll houses (all behind glass); a Civil War room; an art display of a local artist's works; a display about the Olympic career of Ron Milburn, a gold medalist. And then home, after a stop at WalMart to pick up dogfood. LOL! We try to go to local museums that operate on donations only, or very small fees. Some have displays that change every month or so, so we can go fairly often and not see the same things twice. There's a natural history museum and planetarium about an hour away -- that's the biggest problem: we're rural, and everything is like an hour away. We try to go to the zoo once a year. There's an old general merchandise store museum that has the original merchandise and catalogs from the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties. Behind it, there's a telephone museum with a film about how the state got wired for sound. There's a "state park" that is all in a building, with park rangers in uniform for staff, and a stock of videos about local history, including one made several years ago by a local fourth grade class... There's a small park with a pond with ducks and picnic sites with bbq pits, and a couple of giant snapping turtles, and usually a nursery of baby alligators you can hold.
Our first few years, we did ALOT because we were new to our area and we live within 20 miles of Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown....plus a zillion other museums, etc. Now that we've lived here almost 3 years, we take less. We do 2 with our co-op (I'm the coordinator) but we prefer to go by ourselves....we learn more that way. I'd say maybe 2-3 as a family a year now....we went to DC for a week so we haven't done any others than the co-op ones recently.
Up to this year I did not plan them, but now that we see there is free museum day etc we are planning to do that, and I had to plan some for Drama so we had three this year so far for that, and we want to go to the Planetarium for ds at our local cc. For CO op. Ithink we were gonna do that but everyone gets so busy. I think co op feild trips in the past have been our only real planned ones, now that I have planned some myself for dds drama class I am so into it! What fun tohave a plan to go on a certain date etc! WOW! I also like to find the homeschool days at local theme parks or science museums, they generally have good stuff for the kids to do on those days.
We used to take 2 a month before our finances were needed elsewhere. Some were with other local homeschoolers but a majority of them were just the 3 or 4 of us (with or without Daddy) on our own. This year we've had to drastically cut them because 1) money and 2) we're frequently in appointments. I have to say that I miss them myself so I know the kids miss them!
Thanks everyone for yoru responses. We are fairly new to our area too ( we have moved in from out of state) so I am thinking there is so much for us to explore for quite some time. I think since it has been 2 days since our field trip and the excitement is still showing through his behavior while on school tasks that this is definately something I will need to work in to our schedule. I am going to shoot for a field trip atleast every 2 weeks. Thanks:angel:
