Our Journey: Real Life Day 3: Field Trips Are Important

This week on the blog we're getting real. Real life homeschool. It doesn't always look like those pretty pictures we show on the blogs. That is the third or fourth take we've done for that one shot to make sure it looked good :). Real Life is messy. It's fun. It's frustrating. It's real.
You can check out Day 1 and Day 2 posts if you like. I've shared a day in our homeschool and also that some days can be hard. It's true! Today I'm going to talk about field trips. I admit it. Sometimes going to the grocery store can be a field trip because we just haven't gotten out of the house. I want to share with you how important taking field trips really is.

Field trips offer a lot more than just a day out of the house. They offer hands on learning, socialization with your homeschool group for the kids and sanity help for yourself. Sometimes we go just Boo Bear and I but it's still important. It's getting that hands on learning to reiterate topics you've gone over or to learn a new one.

Field trips can be to anywhere that learning happens. Take your children to the bank to learn about opening accounts and money management with their own savings account. Take them to the fire department/police department to learn what goes on behind the scenes of our everyday heroes. This past year we took one to a grocery store and learned how it operates. It was really informative and fun! Plus we got cookies in the end from the bakery ;)

Museums, fairs, exhibits, memorials are all good places to explore. Go out on nature walks or hikes in your area to do a nature journal field trip.

You can even incorporate field trips into your road travels for vacation or business. Research the area along the way before you leave and add some side trips in if possible. We did this recently when we went to visit my parents. We visited a Civil War memorial sight and ended up seeing a reenactment. That was pretty awesome!

Field trips do not have to be huge costly adventures. They can be free and low cost when you take some time and plan them out. To me, those can be even more fun that the more expensive ones! A few tips on field trips that I find helpful are:

Try to plan with your homeschool group or friends (groups get lower prices)
Don't stress about doing bookwork that day. It will come tomorrow
Have fun!!!
Find something that interests your child
Try to do some research/studies before and after you visit the location you have chosen

I'm going to give you an example of a field trip we take pretty regularly. Boo Bear's eye doctor is in the next city over from us. It's about a 45 minute to an hour drive. There is a free museum that he LOVES to go to so every time we are in that town, we go.

Thankfully the last few times we have gone have been scheduled when there was a different visiting exhibit each time. We got to see a T-Rex named Sue and the Megalodon shark. We have even seen Titanoboa. All of these visiting exhibits are favorites of his. I mean come on. Dinosaurs AND Sharks within a month of each other??

I have to admit that sometimes we do a lot of field trips and sometimes we go weeks without one. I'm trying to get better at scheduling those field trips and sticking with them. Sometimes it's hard to get a whole group together. Everyone has crazy schedules. But I'm making a plan to myself to go anyway. Even if I don't have a huge group, we can still have fun and go anyway. :)

How often do you take field trips in your homeschool? Do you have favorite places you go repeatedly?