Maximising Home Schooling Field Trips

Field Trips For Home Schooling Students

Everyone enjoys good field trips. However, for homeschooled pupils, the opportunity to get out of the house and see the world can be very exciting.

Field trips are amazing. Depending on the nature of the trip, you may get to see how all your textbook learning bares relevance in the real world. From witnessing the application of your academics to better understanding the context of your wider learning, it can all bring with it a fresh perspective that revitalises your motivation to study. As with all things, how you approach these circumstances can influence your enjoyment of them. So, we’ve prepared a few tips below to help you make the most of a homeschool field trip!

Have Your Say

While it’s not right to say that you can ‘demand’ where you go on field trips, it’s likely your parent or guardian will take your input into consideration. More so than a school would let their pupils influence the trip destination, at least!

So, perhaps start things off by presenting a few ideas to your parent or guardian. If they know you’re passionate about visiting a relevant place for your studies, they may well be more inclined to choose it for the field trip. It may also be a good idea to tap into how your parent or guardian feels about travelling. After all, some adults travel while teaching their kids, letting them see the world as they learn about it. If your parent or guardian is more adventure-inclined, the choice of your preferred field trip could play into that. Don’t despair if your parent or guardian doesn’t choose your preferred choice of trip. It’s still quite likely they’ve valued your input and chosen a destination that ticks your boxes and theirs.

Keep A Record

If you’re being homeschooled, your parents or guardians are probably more prepared to relax ‘no phone’ policies on a field trip. At least during cool or intriguing moments that are worth a quick picture. So, it may be a good idea to have a chat with your parents or guardians. See how they feel about phones on the trip, and if you can negotiate a few strategic snapshots at the least. Or, they may take some pictures or videos on your behalf, if they don’t wish for you to be looking at your phone the whole time.

Once the intriguing parts of the trip have been documented, you can reflect on them in future study sessions. That way, your field trip is more than just a quick flash in the pain experience, like so many trips can be for private and public school pupils!

Plan Future Trips

When pupils embark on field trips with their public or private school, typically they will enjoy one visit only. After all, funding the adventures of an entire class or even year group of pupils will not come cheap. Sadly, cuts to school budgets have been made regarding field trips.

As a homeschooled pupil, however, there’s a good chance you can plan repeat visits with your family. You’re a smaller unit, which means less money will be spent on the endeavour. That can very well open the door to repeat visits over the course of your academic year.

Why begin with this acknowledgement? Well, it can inform your attitude to your field trip. You won’t rush around trying to see and do everything, and you’ll have more time to calmly absorb everything you’re experiencing on the trip. You’ll feel better about things, and therefore more likely to enjoy the field trip.

Conclusion

Making the most of something nearly always involves taking a step back, planning, and seeing the bigger picture. If you do that with your homeschool field trips, it’s highly likely you’ll get so much more out of them. Good luck out there!

If you want to see the range of courses Oxford Home Schooling offer for study, you can find our Home Page here. Scroll to the top of the page and click on Courses.