Skip to main content

Field Trippin’!

imageFor me, the most really, totally, completely cool part of homeschooling is FIELD TRIPS!  Anytime, anywhere – yay!

When I fired ds16’s elementary school about five years ago, one of the first things I did was look over his “careers” unit (we kept the textbooks!) and plan a couple of field trips.  I don’t remember where else we went, but I do remember the trip to the courthouse – just him and me (ditched the baby, who was Naomi Rivka at the time), in the back of a small claims courtroom, having the time of our lives watching ex-neighbours and ex-contractors bicker about who owed what to whom.

That’s the “lone wolf” field trip:  you decide, you plan, you go.

Then, however, there’s the “pack wolf” field trip, the kind that is designed for a school group, but you can make it work for homeschoolers if you really try.  There are some experiences that can only be had in a group. 

I suppose this is how classroom teachers do it:  pick an activity, book the event, and go.  Except that once I have picked an activity, I then have to find a group. 

Luckily, there’s a fairly active Yahoo group for local homeschoolers, and it seems like there are almost always a few people willing to go along with stuff.  So far this year, we have had two fun trips to the NFB’s downtown Mediatheque animation workshops, plus the Royal Winter Fair. 

Upcoming, I have finalized a trip to a primary-level symphony concert – in a major concert hall downtown – that involved collecting prepayments, booking, etc.  The folks didn’t really know what to do with me, standing in their office with cash in hand, but eventually, they took it happily enough.  I guess school boards usually pay by cheque.  Go figure.

imageTwo new ones that I’m working on are a late-March maple syrup trip to the Humber Arboretum and a fire station visit.  Not that the fire station people are getting back to me.  Drat, and drat again.  Guess I’ll have to follow up one more time…

Today, we had the lowest of all low-key field trips – Allen Gardens, one of my favourite places in the city at this time of year.

I was thinking yesterday that this would be a great thing to put on my résumé – you know, to prove that I haven’t just been sitting home twiddling my thumbs all these years.  Choosing educational events, coordinating programs, parents, kids, payments.  It’s a lot of work, and sometimes, it feels like I’m the only parent doing it – but then I go onto the list and see something cool that someone else is pulling together for their kids plus others and I feel encouraged.

How do you coordinate field trips in your homeschool?  Are you mostly a “lone wolf” or “pack wolf”?

Previous Allen Garden trips (we are there OFTEN at this time of year):

Comments

  1. We love field trips. Today we went to a place that had slot car racing. The kids loved it.

    Kathi Still trying to figure out science for my 3rd grader.

    ReplyDelete
  2. We have a homeschool group in our community that gets together for field trips. We have someone (not me) who does most of the organizing. We don't do "lone" field trips too often (I should do more!).
    I'm still in limbo on science right now. My 4th grader just finished one set of curriculum and we haven't started anything else and my 1st grader has been studying animals but we need to expand her science lessons.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page.  As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi!  If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah :  the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science :  Plants, Animals, Human Body Math   Ambleside :  Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature     Science General Poems for Elemental Science .  Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful.  Three pages are included:  one page with two po

It's Heart Month: 3 days left to save lives!

Dear Friends & Family: Hi, everybody! Sorry I can’t stop by in person... you're a bit out of my area.  :-) We’re out walking up and down on our street on this beautiful afternoon to raise money for Heart & Stroke.  This cause is important to me (I won't say it's close to my heart , because that would be tacky!).  I hope you'll join me by donating online. Growing up, I watched as every single one of my grandparents' lives were shortened by heart disease and strokes, and my father had a defibrillator that saved his life on more than one occasion.  Heart disease and stroke kill 1 in 3 Canadians and are the #1 killer of women. Please click this link to be redirected to my main page at the Heart & Stroke website: http://tinyurl.com/AtlasHeart Thus ends my personal appeal.  Official information follows.  :-))) ----- Heart disease and stroke is the #1 killer of women - taking more women's lives than all forms of cancer combined. But no one is immune. Th