Listen to this articleAmong the countless benefits of homeschooling is flexible scheduling. This means your family has the freedom to learn whenever and wherever you want. Indeed, as a homeschooling family, the whole world is your classroom! You have the freedom to take memorable field trips during the week so your students can learn from experts, gain hands-on experience, give back to the community, and study firsthand what other students may only read about in books.
Not All Homeschooling Is Schooling at Home: 48 Field Trip Ideas
Whether you’re preparing for the new year ahead or just looking for a quick trip to take tomorrow, you’ve come to the right place. Below is a list of favorite homeschool field trip ideas so you can learn with your family outside the home.
Take an Outdoor Adventure
Not too many other families get to take a whole day to explore nature together. Take advantage of this flexibility and get outside with your students! There is so much to learn from God’s vast and beautiful creation.
- Go for a hike at a state or national park
- Explore a local park
- Visit a nearby farm
- Go apple or blueberry picking at an orchard
- Take a car trip on a scenic road (and maybe listen to an audiobook!)
- Get involved in a community garden
- Visit a greenhouse or botanical garden
- In fall or winter, visit a pumpkin patch or a Christmas tree farm
- Visit an observatory or planetarium
Many of these nature field trips are perfect opportunities for your students to bring along their Nature Sketch Journals and practice the Five Core Habits of Grammar as they scientifically recording their outdoor findings!
Observe Animals and Wildlife
Whether it’s observing wildlife on a nature hike or animals at a zoo, there are so many wonderful opportunities to observe other creatures with whom we share this planet!
- Visit your local zoo or petting zoo
- Visit an animal farm
- Go to an aquarium
- Visit a bird sanctuary or go bird watching at a park
- Tour a dairy farm
- Ask a veterinarian to give your family a tour of his or her practice
Read: “Challenge A Science Fair: A Parent’s Perspective”
Get Involved in Community Service
Community service offers a unique chance to combine a family field trip and giving back to others in your community.
- Volunteer at a soup kitchen
- Clean up littered trash in your neighborhood or in a park
- Visit members of a nursing home
- Visit a children’s hospital
- Clean up a neighbor’s yard
Fortunately, nonprofit organizations make it easy help others in your community. Whether you serve with a larger organization like Samaritan’s Purse or Habitat for Humanity or with a local organization near you, field trips like these can be meaningful ways to spend time serving and learning together as a family.
Gain Firsthand Knowledge of Society
Most people at businesses, organizations, and facilities love to show students around what they do for a living. Also, visiting places like the following give students a wonderful firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of society.
- Visit a hospital
- Tour a power plant
- Visit a water treatment facility
- Go to a recycling center
- Visit a factory
- Take a trip to your post office
- Sit in during a case at your local courthouse
- Tour your local library
- Visit your state capitol building
- Tour a fire department (as you can imagine, your littlest learners will love this one!)
Observe a Fine Arts Performance or Display
While there is wonderful art in movies and TV, it’s important to expose students to other arts that make life all the more beautiful.
- Watch a theater performance
- Visit a symphony or orchestra
- Walk through an art gallery
- Visit a local art festival
- Make pottery at a local studio
- Tour a glass blowing studio
- Visit a sculpture garden
Learn Some History
Visiting historical locations or observing historical artifacts in a museum offer tangible ways of learning history that make past people and events even more real in the minds of students.
- Visit your state museum
- Tour an old schoolhouse
- Visit a historical battlefield or reenactment
- Walk through an old cemetery
- Visit an old church building
- Visit a historical location your family has read about in a book
If your family is looking for a larger historical excursion, places like Colonial Williamsburg and the Smithsonian offer unforgettable field trips your family will reminisce about for years to come.
Have Some Fun
As a homeschooling family, the whole world is your classroom. This means that your family can learn whenever and wherever. In other words, you don’t have to go with the traditional field trip ideas like visiting a museum or touring an aquarium. There’s no reason why your family can’t learn from activities for fun and entertainment!
- Watch a movie at a theater
- Go ice skating or roller blading
- Go swimming in a pool or lake
- Visit an amusement park
- Attend a sports game
Read: “The Joy of the Foundations Program”
Field Trip Ideas with Other Families
Sometimes, it can be daunting to plan a field trip all by yourself. So, get other homeschooling parents from your local community involved as you plan to take some field trips from the ideas above. This will not only make planning much, much easier, it will also allow your family opportunities to build lifelong relationships with other parents and students.
Have fun exploring the world together with your family on some of these field trips!
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