Home schooling is often misjudged as being anti-social and solely “at-home”. That’s not often the case. Pending the type of home schooling your child is involved in, there’s a plethora of home school field trip ideas for them! These field trips are an excellent way for home-schooled students to get out of their homes and explore the world. Let’s talk about our top 10 picks from virtual tours to in person interactive experiences!
Visit a State Park
State parks are a great way to get kids outdoors and learn about the environment. They provide learning opportunities for a wide variety of subjects from geology to wildlife! Some state parks even offer guided tours. You’ll have to do a little research to find the closest state park to you, but visiting one (or many!) is such a fun way to learn. Teachers can even provide worksheets to do or questionnaires to fill out about what students learn at the chosen park.
Find a Local Planetarium
One of the coolest home school field trip ideas is visiting a planetarium or observatory in your area. Now, you may have to travel a bit to get there, but it’s worth it! There are so many things that kids can learn from visiting a planetarium. For instance, they can learn about constellations and the stars at night. They can also learn about how planets work, and what they're made of. Some locations even offer hands on interactive exhibits to give kids a real feel of the universe they belong to!
Read More : 5 amazing field trip ideas
Make a Day out of Visiting NYC
New York City is a fascinating and exciting place to explore with kids of any age, making it a fantastic option for home schoolers. There are so many activities here that it is easy to plan a day of exploring all the boroughs. You can visit any of their fascinating museums such as the Museum of the City of New York or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also offer interactive museums like the Museum of Illusions and New York Hall of Science. When they need a break, hangout in their local parks or even visit the M&M factory for a fun little treat! NYC is a massive and bustling city though, so be sure you and your child can handle that before making your way in!
Take a Tour Through a Greenhouse
Greenhouses are structures that use glass or plastic to create an artificially warm environment. They provide a perfect environment for growing plants and flowers during the winter months, and they make for one of the most unique home school field trip ideas! Kids love to learn, whether they want to admit it or not, and getting to learn while looking at beautiful greenery is quite an adventure! Kids will get the chance to learn about a wide variety of plant-life, how to take care of them, and which varieties may be going extinct and why!
Visit a Volcano…Virtually
One of the more unique field trip ideas is visiting a volcano (sort of)! If you’re looking for a field trip for home schooled kids that can still be done at home, consider virtual field trips. One of our favorites is visiting a volcano through the use of virtual tours. No hot lava involved here! You just pop on a webcam and take a look at one of over 150 live volcanoes all over the globe. Show students what an active volcano looks like in real time!
Pet a Stingray at an Aquarium
After a long day of school, we all need to get out and explore the world, or more specifically, the ocean! Visiting an aquarium is an experience that every student deserves to get to have. Aquariums provide an area to educate yourself on different ocean animals and their habitats. They can also be a great place to learn how you can keep the ocean alive and healthy. Some aquariums even have touch tanks where you can pet live ocean animals like sting rays or starfish. Students will get the opportunity to learn so much all from one place through guided or self-guided tours and exhibits that inspire them to love and take care of our oceans.
Check Out a Recycling Center for Earth Day
Recycling centers are the best places to go if you're looking for a way to educate students on how to reduce your carbon footprint and help preserve our environment. Many recycling centers actually offer in person tours of their facilities. The goal is to not only teach students about how recycling works, but inspire them to reduce, reuse, and recycle whatever they can. They’ll learn about the importance of recycling and how it benefits them, the planet, and all the living beings that inhabit it!
Read more: 10 amazing virtual field trip ideas.
Go Apple Picking in the Fall
Fall is the time of year for apple picking. What a lot of people don’t know is that there are a lot of harvesting farms that offer tours of their grounds with activities for students to participate in. For example, some offer lessons on how to make homemade apple cider and others take your on tours of their apple orchards and tell you all about the different apple varieties they house! Students will get to learn all about apples and even get to take some home, what a treat!
An Air and Space Museum
Air and Space museums are museums provide some of the most fun homeschool field trip ideas dedicated to the history of aviation and spaceflight. These museums often showcase artifacts that have been used during flight travel and space exploration. Some popular air and space museums include: The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Military Aviation Museum, and Palm Springs Air Museum. However, there are plenty more all over the US!
Community Service Centers
A homeschool field trip idea that really stands out is visiting local community service centers. This can be food drives, homeless shelters, pet service centers, really anything that helps out the community! Visiting these centers as a field trip allows kids to see a different side of their community and get involved with making a difference in others lives. They can help pass out food, play with animals, or work with agencies to collect trash!
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re taking your home schooler to a fascinating museum, to help out their community, or to check out a volcano, there are home school field trip ideas for everyone! Field trips are ideal for home schoolers because it gets them out of the house and into the world. Finding the perfect one for your student doesn’t have to be difficult, any one of these 10 ideas is guaranteed to impress even the toughest of kids! Have fun exploring!
