Making Field Trips Meaningful

Have you ever planned and organized a seemingly awesome field trip for your kids only to be disappointed in how little they paid attention, how boring it was, or how they behaved?

Did the field trip feel like a failure?

Whether you attend regular field trips with your local homeschool group or you plan them as a family-only excursion, there are some principles you can remember that will make museums, tours, and explorations more peaceful, potent, and meaningful for everyone involved.

Keep these questions in mind when you are planning your next field trip:

Is it age-appropriate?

How much passive listening will be required during the tour?  Is the entire museum “hands-off”?  These kinds of questions should be asked whether you are deciding to take your toddler or your teen.

Older kids will quickly get tired of information that is simplistic while younger kids will need to move around and have frequent breaks.  The schedule, topic, and destination of your field trip are all important factors to help you determine what age levels would benefit.

If you have to take younger (or older) children to a trip that is not their style or temperament, make arrangements with some other mothers or your spouse to watch the interested children while you take them on breaks.  As a group, you should make a polite gesture to the mothers of babies and toddlers who want their older children to enjoy themselves.

Is it fun and interactive?

Speaking of passive listening again, does the trip provide any motivation to learn?  If the tour is boring to you, it is definitely doubly boring to your child.

Children need to interact and engage to learn.  Look for trips that provide activities, free play, crafts, and other kinesthetic and audio/visual elements.

Older kids that can take in more can ask to become part of museum curator projects or other opportunities to go “behind the scenes”.

Part of the fun in a field trip is the ability to explore freely.  Make sure there is extra time for children to roam the museum, study the animals, ask questions on the tour, etc.  Don’t coerce them into looking, listening, or learning.  Set the atmosphere, as the parent, of a fun and frivolous time.

That is not saying you can’t do any work on a field trip.  Just make sure that the “work” is done in a light-hearted manner instead of a “homework” attitude.

Do the kids want to go?

This is a simple question but one that is sometimes overlooked in our good intentions.  If the child is simply not interested in going in the first place, then the information (no matter how fantastically presented) will most likely be meaningless to them.

Sometimes children can be motivated through a curiosity in the subject.  When planning for a field trip, try researching the topic together and trying to find out if it is something they would be curious about.  Show them what activities and locations would be involved in the experience.  You might find they change their minds once they get a glimpse of what the trip will entail.

Going into a field trip with the highest expectations of behavior and cognitive function in your kids might just be asking for a disaster.  By keeping outings fun, free, and flexible you are more likely to create a momentous learning occasion!