Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal Review

If you've been around here you know that we love Apologia Educational Ministries. We have used them for science ever since we started homeschooling. We recently got the chance to review a brand new product from them called the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal.  What it is... The Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal can be used in a variety of ways. As homeschoolers , field trips are a huge part of our year. This helps to reiterate what we have learned. It is a way to learn new things and to put your hands on history, science and even math once in a while. This journal gives you a way to record all you do each year and to explore options you might not have thought about as a field trip.  The book itself is full of pages for you to document your adventures. To start off with it has a checklist /guide for you as the parent to prepare for a field trip. It talks about discussing your field trip location before you get there. Give your child goals for the trip of things that you want them to learn and take away from the visit.  It also discusses virtual field trips. We haven't done a whole lot of those but I am looking at doing more. I think it's a great way to "visit" far off places you might never make it to. It also gives your students a checklist for them to make sure they are ready for their trip. 

 The book lists a variety of field trip ideas to help you plan places to go. I know I have some trouble at times thinking of free/inexpensive trips to take. Oh there's plenty of places to go that you have to budget for. Those "off the beaten path" trips are a little harder for me to think of. Thankfully there's a list in the book to help give you ideas!

 The next pages you'll find are places for you to document where you've been. Places in your state or places in the country that you've visited can easily be tracked and placed on these pages.

You can track the date and the location. I am going to have him color the states as we have visited attractions there. I think that'll be a neat way to see how you travel across the country. We have been to several states in the South but my/our goal is to visit even more outside of the South. It'll be interesting to see how many states we can get colored in.

The next set of pages are for you to document each trip you take. This could be a group field trip or one you take with just your family. Each page allows you to document the following :

• Date of trip
• Books read to prepare for trip
• Story of your day
• Map of location
• Emergency contact and more!

There are pages for your photo of the trip as well or your child can draw what they remember. 

Other pages in the journal include your child's special spot. It is one of their favorite places and there's a page for all four seasons. It allows them to record the changes they see throughout the year and it's fun to see how each season affects their spot. 

How we used it... We are using this to record all of our field trips for the year. (or until we fill the book). We have recorded the trips we have taken this year and he has new trips while he was visiting with Grandparents. As we get ready for a trip we make sure we research the spot before hand and write down what we want to learn before we go. If it is a history sight, we spend time reading about it or researching what took place there before we go. 

We have filled in our trips to other states and tried remembering everywhere we have visited. We take the book along with us on our new field trips and write down as we go through the trips. 

What we think... I honestly love this journal! I love the idea of writing down the adventures we take. So many times we snap photos of our adventure with our phone or digital camera and I'm bad about not printing them out. I shudder to think what would happen if I lost my computer or disk I have them saved on. This gives me a reason to print out the pictures so that he has a keepsake to take with him. Here's a shot of the pages we did for his recent visit to a museum with his grandparents. 

His favorite thing he saw was the knights in armor. We are currently printing off some of the pictures he took so he can add them to the pages. 

I would advise you to take the journal along with you on your trip. Your child can write down different aspects of the trip while you're visiting the area. This helps you remember the awesome things they saw right then. I help him write and take down what he says on some of the information as he's a typical boy and hates to write. (we are working on that :))

This is another wonderful product from Apologia and I highly recommend you considering it as you try to incorporate more field trips. As usual with the Apologia curriculum you'll find a password in the book that will take you to a list of awesome field trip ideas they have put together for you. 

Be sure to click the link below to read more reviews of the journal!