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Hints for Home Schoolers – Field Trip!

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The past three hints have been a rough idea on how to squeeze it all into your day without losing it! Our next topic is the ever popular field-trip, and some ideas for making the most of it. One of the great advantages a home-schooling family has, is the freedom to adjust schedules.

  • If you have a zoo within reasonable driving distance, consider purchasing an annual family pass. Our zoo included parking with our pass, as well as entry into other zoos around the country.
  • Science and history museums also offer annual passes, with similar reciprocal entry to related venues.
  • State parks offer an annual car pass, usually consisting of a vinyl, dated sticker for your windshield.

Our home school had a field trip every month. By watching the weather closely – we would cancel school for that day – and go to the zoo! By taking our field trips during the week, we were able to avoid large weekend crowds. On nicer field trip days – we visited an outdoor interest. During brutal winter weeks, we still took a field trip, but spent the day roaming around a museum. I will stress, that our field trip schedule was never scheduled. Sometimes, the kids would wake up, and while they were eating breakfast – I would announce it.

If you are following an accredited curriculum, the missed school day will need to be made up for. Our schedule from A Beka Academy allowed for a large block of vacation time during December. I would shave days from that block of time, and use it for field trips. I discovered that if we had too much time off in December, it was too hard to get back in the swing of things.

If we brought lunch from home (almost always) we would get a treat like ice cream, or something from the historic bakery at the museum. The scene above is from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

Don’t overlook large outdoor museums, usually consisting of historic buildings. Often the employees and docents are well versed in the lore of times past, and will regale any children you have that are willing to listen!

The image above is from the Henry Ford Greenfield Village Museum in Michigan.

Important field-trip tips to remember:

  1. One field trip a month
  2. Watch the weather
  3. Watch the runny noses! No fun going anywhere unless everyone is feeling well.
  4. Spontaneity can add to the experience and reduce stress. If I told them ahead of time we were going – and something went wrong (ie: one waking up with a sore throat, severe weather) there would be disappointed faces all day.
  5. If you bring lunch from home, allowing the kids a treat from the venue will quiet any quests for the other stuff. It’s a kind of bribery, but heck – it works!! And can save a heap of money over buying lunch out. Especially teen and preteen boys can eat so much, you could regret taking them anywhere!!!
  6. By buying annual memberships to places you like to go, it will save money and the necessity of budgeting every month for the field trip. The annual passes are always a better deal over individual ticket prices.

In spring, we often opted for the metro-park, which had a farm.

Babies everywhere!

She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

Proverbs 31: 26

sage

Hints for Home Schoolers – Pets

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Our home school has always had pets.  We actually had pets before any children came along – so from their infancy animals were a constant presence.  Children and pets – a match made in heaven. . .

Pets can be a valuable “spring-board” for many home school adventures!  In addition – kids can learn responsibility for another living creature.  Pets can help human beings, who come into this world as  completely self-centered selfish creatures, to grow into mature, dependable individuals.

  • A pet can be the basis of a writing project.  Any composition, book report or research paper will be enhanced by the child’s interest in their pet.
  • Pets (particularly dogs) will a be great ally in enforcing schedules.
  • Recalcitrant nappers can change into the most eager sleepers if allowed to nap with a pet.
  • Measuring food and counting treats are excellent for teaching basic math.
  • Developing and making home made dog biscuits is a great project.
  • Growing “cat grass” and sunflowers (for seeds) is a good botany/biology project.
  • Pets can reduce test time stress simply by being there.
  • Pets can console kids (and adults) that are feeling down.
  • When kids are home with pets all day – no one gets lonely – kids or pets.

My kids very often had a cat on their laps or desks, and a dog at their feet all day during school.

As they get older, the pet may stimulate the child to work at an animal shelter, or even pursue a career in human or animal sciences.  The benefits of home schooling with pets are too numerous to cover here, but every study shows that caring for and living with pets makes us better, healthier people all around.

What about outdoor pets?  Positioning a bird feeder outside the window where you have your home school, can be a constant source of delight – no matter what the kid’s ages are.  Keeping field guides and binoculars at the ready will spur kids to look for identifying marks, and triumphant cries of delight will be heard when the correct identification is made.

 

The feeder(s) can be an excellent exercise in record keeping and charting comparisons of most desirable seeds. Unsprayed lawns will have even more birds and critters, as well as insects to study.  Dandelions can be picked in heaps for pet guinea pigs to eat.

In cold winter areas – home made suet cakes are a good science project, and again – a good basis for experimentation.  Do downy woodpeckers like suet or peanut butter better?  Oilers or stripers? (sunflower seeds)  Writing it down and illustrating it involves all the areas of school – art, math, language skills, science, and history.  Bird calls have been used as the basis of some great classical music and poetry – such as ‘The Lark Ascending,’ by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which was inspired by a poem by George Meridith.

To A Skylark

O skylark! I see thee and call thee joy!
Thy wings bear thee up to the breast of the dawn;
I see thee no more, but thy song is still
The tongue of the heavens to me!

Thus are the days when I was a boy;
Sweet while I lived in them, dear now they’re gone:
I feel them no longer, but still, O still
They tell of the heavens to me.

–George Meredith–

2 Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto Him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.3 Sing unto Him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.4 For the Word of the Lord is right; and all His works are done in truth.5 He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. 

Psalm 33: 2-5

sage

For the Lord’s Day – O Perfect Love

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=CNtnhL4bHcs%3Fsi%3DRXXPPEIm8apJ7QLe

1 O perfect Love, all human thought transcending,
lowly we kneel in prayer before thy throne,
that theirs may be the love which knows no ending,
whom thou in sacred vow dost join in one.

2 O perfect Life, be thou their full assurance
of tender charity and steadfast faith,
of patient hope and quiet, brave endurance,
with childlike trust that fears no pain or death.

3 Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow;
grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife;
grant them the vision of the glorious morrow
that will reveal eternal love and life.

Short Name:Dorothy F. Gurney
Full Name:Gurney, Dorothy F., 1858-1932
Birth Year:1858
Death Year:1932

Blomfield, Dorothy F. , was born at 3 Finsbury Circus, Oct. 4, 1858. Miss Blomfield is the eldest daughter of the late Rev. F. G. Blomfield, sometime Rector of St. Andrew’s Undershaft, London, and granddaughter of the late Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London. Her very beautiful hymn for Holy Matrimony, “O perfect Love, all human thought transcending,” was written for her sister’s marriage in 1883, and was intended to be sung to Strength and Stay, in Hymns Ancient & Modern, No. 12. Subsequently it was set as an anthem by J. Barnby for the marriage of the Duke of Fife with the Princess Louise of Wales, on July 27, 1889. In 1889 it was included in the Supplemental Hymns to Hymns Ancient & Modern, and in 1890 in the Hymnal Companion.

–John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)

http://www.hymnary.org/person/Gurney_DF

Titus 2:3-5

3 The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;

4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,

5 To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.