Weekend Edition~Homeschool Field Trips

Homeschool field trips can be anything, any where. Even the grocery store! lol haha

But, seriously, I often get questioned about field trips and socializing. In my area, in Kansas, almost all the major places children go, have homeschool days, once a week-

Zoo
Science/Children's Museum
Art Museum
Living History Museum
Botanic Gardens
Skating Rink

And that's just off the top of my head of the places in my area that have weekly homeschool classes/days. So if you want to make sure to join up with other homeschooling families, call up any of these types of places in your area. As well as libraries, or any other places you know that children go to regularly.

Also you may consider joining homeschool field trip groups. I personally belong to about 3 or 4 for my area. They have meet ups at local parks, the space museum, pumpkin patches, chocolate factories, bug museums, smaller zoos, and so on.

Other wise, you really don't have to have field trips that are scheduled with groups. You can go on your own, or call up a few local sisters and see if they would like to get together. I find going on our own easiest.

I also purchase, and ask grandparents and relatives instead of buying toys and "gifts" for our children to gift them memberships to the above type places. This really gives us a lot of options almost any day of the week to just take off on a field trip! I recently learned that my local living history museum will give free membership if you volunteer 50 hours a year! That's easy enough and we will start doing that.

A few times a year the Smithsonian Museum has free museum day for ALL kinds of museums. In my area it can include-

Oil Museum
Space Museum
Transportation Museum
 Airplane Museum
Salt Mines
Science Museum/Childrens Museum
Living History Museum
African American Museum
Museum of World Treasures
Art Museum
Botanic Gardens
Carousel Museum
History Museum

And many more! It's for sure worth checking what they offer for free museum days in your area.

Also keep your ear to the ground about any and all free kids events in your area. For my area the fall is FULL of them.

One mall sponsors a free Arts and Crafts fair, with tons of free Arts and Crafts for the children to participate in.

Free Fair day-we always go to free state Fair day, as it's also one ticket a ride day. So we can go and have fun for a entire day for about 20 bucks! For the entire family. Usually this time of year they start selling the ride tickets at deep deep discounts, because this is spring, and the fair isn't til Autumn.

Our local Homeschool Advocacy group has a yearly zoo day too, with tons of free classes for all the children. You do not have to be a member of the group to go. You do however get a deep zoo discount if you are. In the past they have also had Botanic Garden Days, that were amazing field trips (so many craft and learning stations, absolutely free! Only pay to get into the Garden, and again deep discount for members, free if you had a Botanic pass as well).

We love going to the pumpkin patch each year. And have found on opening day it's half price. So we try to go opening day and then again with a group. The group discounts are also pretty good.

The local cider (apple) fest was sooo much fun. We have decided it will also be a annual field trip. We were able to watch cider being made right before our eyes, music bands playing, and my children's favorite part, hot apple cider donuts! haha

Also we found out several years ago, that our local history museum, every Halloween does a "night" at the museum. It's a self guided tour, with many volunteers in each area to tell you about the exhibits, in the dark. It's a play on the hollywood movie, Night at the Museum. But, because many "christians" in our area do not celebrate Halloween. The History Museum has been hosting this. It has NO, Halloween connotations or mentioning, and it keeps the family who doesn't celebrate Halloween out of the house that evening, avoiding harassment, and having to sit in the dark of their home. And best of all, it's FREE! haha

If you are going to join any facebook or otherwise homeschool field trip groups, I would suggest joining in August (join any time, but August is when the most field trips are being planned). And usually September and October are jam packed with field trips. You may have to be very very choosy! Sometimes there are 10 or more a week! Especially in September. They usually taper off by mid/late October. But, it's a really good time to find out what people are doing in your area as far as field trips go.

Do not be surprised also if you have places that you would not traditionally think would have homeschool days, do actually have them. Here in the midwest a amusement park, called Silver Dollar City, host a annual homeschool weekend. It includes, different print outs for history, science, life skills like candy making, candle making, black smithing, and so on. I believe that Six Flags may as well, but I am not as familiar with them, as we do not have one local to us. Make sure to turn over every rock and view every thing that could be a possible field trip. And you would be surprised how many places are supporting and hosting homeschool days now days. And even if they are not, exactly homeschool they can still be awesome field trips. Such as Silver Dollar City's World Fest where dancers, singers and craftsman from all over the world come and show their arts. And then there is cowboy and craft fair in the fall. So much to be learned during that as well. And I am sure many other amusement parks and such places also have awesome learning opportunities.

I also really love Tina's sheet for field trip suggestions and even print it and keep it in my planner. As well as use her Field Trip planning pages.

If you scroll down to number 19 and 20, these are the field trip pages I use in my planner for planning field trips. I usually print out enough of the 20 Field Trip Planner pages, ironically enough, for 20 field trips for our school year. Of course how many you will want to print and plan for, is completely your choice. I like to plan for 160 days of at home, traditional type learning styles (reading books, doing math etc), and 20 days of out of the house field trips. Now in reality we get many more then 20 a year. But, I generally only count the same place once or twice a year. And only more then once, if the second, or more times, was for a completely different learning experience. But, we all know we learn different things every day. However, I just like my records looking a little more diverse. haha So in reality we probably go on more likely 100 or more field trips a year. When you count all the places we go that really are out of the home learning. And all those memberships we have that I mentioned.

And this is her field trip reference form. It's a great list of different field trip ideas, by season. Just scroll down to number 6 to view it. I use Frixion highlighter (they are erasable), so I highlight in one color the field trips I want to go on for the year, and then erase and highlight in a different color as we actually accomplish them. It kind of keeps me thinking about getting out and remembering what kinds of things are around during each season.

As I have stated on my blog in the past Tina is a fellow sister. The next two links, I do not know any thing at all about the authors of these sites. But, I do really love their printable field trip logs, for the children to fill out about their field trip!

Children's Field Trip Log.

Children's Trip Journal.

I have both of the above downloaded and saved to my pc. If in the future either of these site links become defunct, please email me, and I will upload the original log/journal pages for you.

Any how, as you have probably figured out by now. I am not in any way, shape or form, worried about homeschooled children and their socializing skills. In fact, I worry much more about their counter parts in public schools socialization skills. So, I want to encourage you, while it can be much fun to go in a pre-planned group arrangement with other homeschoolers. It doesn't always work out, and your child will get just as much interaction by just going out and going to these places. I have never been to one of the above places, with out my children finding people to talk to and socialize with. Also do not just limit yourself to homeschool groups for group activities, we have went on many congregation group trips to the zoos, and the like when public school is out. So that all the children in the congregation get times to play together and socially interact.