Homeschool field trips are an essential part of a family's education.  If you’re like many modern homeschooling families, you aren't content to spend long hours at the kitchen table studying the real world, you want to be in it.  Educational field trips are the way to go because learning happens everywhere.

Virtual Field Trips

Many museums and other places offering educational field trips have a variety of resources on their website to help teachers and parents maximize the educational impact of their visit.  For example, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art offers printable lesson plans and even power point presentations showcasing aspects of the exhibit that you wouldn’t know just from looking at it. 

 A history museum might showcase pictures of the archeologists uncovering the artifacts as well as displays of related materials and even extended reading suggestions.  Taking a virtual field trip is a great way to prepare for the real field trip.  The exhibits come alive when kids are interested in what they’re seeing.  

Virtual field trips are great ways to prepare for a real field trip.  Using a virtual field trip to replace a real field trip is a great idea in the winter, or when the museum offers a great exhibit, but is too far away for travel.  

Additional virtual field trip opportunities arise after the visit to the museum, when notable discoveries are looked up for clarification and investigation.  Be sure to take pictures (if you’re allowed) write notes, or use your cell phone’s voice message or voice recording program to record little things that spark an interest during the trip.

Science Field Trips

Science field trips can stretch beyond the obvious science museum.  Your local community college or university will have a laboratory (or several).  Visiting scientists in the workplace is a great way to feed an interest in a science career.  Photography labs, medical labs and emergency rooms, automotive mechanics, agricultural research centers, engineering facilities, the zoo and the arboretum are just a few ideas for science field trips. 

A family that is a little uncomfortable teaching science can use science field trips to begin a lesson, and then study further using online resources and library books.  Once the child has undergone a personal investigation that followed a field trip, it might be wise to schedule a follow-up field trip, making sure to ask for personal time with one of the scientists or workers at the facility for questions and answers. 

An entire living Science curriculum can be made from regularly scheduled field trips, plus the time and resources necessary to follow up with reading, experiments and other explorations.

Local Field Trips

Your local community probably has a wealth of places for field trips.  Start with the yellow pages and flip through, making a note of which places you’d like to learn more about.  Is there an old building in town with history you’d like to learn more about? Schedule a local field trip. 

Part of being a homeschooling family means showing children, by example, how to follow our own interests.  Don’t feel strange calling to schedule a field trip.  Explain that you’re a homeschooling family and that you’d like to come take a tour.  If the place isn’t accustomed to offering tours, it might ease their mind to know that it’s just you and your 2 kids and that you just want “the ten cent tour” just to be shown around.

Homeschool Field Trips

Remember, when you’re on Homeschool field trips, that sometimes you might be the only homeschooling family they’ve ever met.  Surely, if you walk through the newsroom of your local paper and the children are acting like animals, someone is bound to refer to you as “those crazy homeschoolers.” 

Be sure to plan your field trips during a time of day when the kids have an easier time behaving and impress upon them the importance of being respectful of the workers and the facility you’re visiting.  Thank your tour guide verbally and have the kids sign a thank-you card.

Whether field trips are a huge part of your homeschooling curriculum or just a small part, they’re bound to be some of the more memorable moments in your homeschooling and are worthy of extra planning and attention.  Virtual field trips, Science field trips and local field trips are just a few unconventional ways to explore the world with your children.  Enjoy your travels!

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