Field Trip for Homeschooled Kids – Let Them Explore Nature

by Alesha Wilson
(Wilmington, NC)

While educational toys and activities for homeschooled kids play a big role in their learning, extra activities like field trips also go a long way when it comes to their development as individuals. Exploring their environment can keep young minds active and alert. Many of these field trips are necessary for developing the whole person.

As a homeschool instructor, you can do structured play anytime, but you must also plan for a field trip that will enrich the child’s learning and improve the way he understands his lessons. Teaching natural science, for instance, can simply become a theoretical process if the child does not connect what he learns from the book with what he sees in the environment.

Nature exploration can start right outside your back door. Simply letting your children play outside can be educational. However, this can be a problem if you live in an urban area. Therefore, if you’re homeschooling kids in a metropolitan region, schedule a trip to a nearby nature reserve or a nature camp so that the kids can get exposed to the great outdoors.

The best thing about nature is it’s free. While you may have to pay for cabin lodgings and camp instructor fees, the wonders that you can glean out of the chirping of the birds in the morning and the gorgeous way the sun rays cascade through the leaves of trees can be priceless. It can also become a source of inspiration for budding artists. Many of the best painters derived their best works just by staring at the natural environment. Nature can help you teach children about the fundamentals of arts and the sciences.

The field trip’s objective may be to collect rocks if you’re teaching about geology. You can also give your child a camera if the subject you are teaching is related with the arts. Photography is a skill that develops out of one single spectacular experience in a person’s life. Ask any photographer around and he or she will be able to tell you the first time he found out that snapping pictures of beautiful things can be fun. Let nature be your child’s source of inspiration to dream big.

Natural phenomenon makes kids think and stimulates their brain. If you’re a proponent of inquiry based learning, exposing your child to nature can be a good way to proceed with this. Your child may ask anything from the color of the sky outside the city and the reason why fireflies carry torches around. Hearing a frog croak after the rain can open a discussion on how tadpoles are created. Answers to a child’s questions can be the foundation for their future ambitions in life.

Lastly, you can do your part in raising environmentally aware kids that care for the planet more. This is the best time to do that, while they’re young and impressionable.

Aleshsa Wilson is a staff writer at RockwelNutrition.com. You can get the latest Rockwell Nutrition coupon here.

You can check homeschool field trips for more ideas of activities to do with children.

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