Can we talk about Field Trips?

Hands-on learning is the very best kind of learning, and field trips can be a very good idea to support hands-on learning.

As I consider beginning a discussion of field trips, issues that come to mind are:

• financial considerations;
• location;
• age and mobility/obedience of the kids

Financial considerations
Field trips can cost money, so if there is no money to spend you need to understand that field trips do not need to cost money! Or they might cost as little as the gas to drive your car. Ways to make a field trip free include:

• packing a lunch;
• everyone taking a water bottle;
• taking a gallon of extra water (or more) if appropriate and necessary.

Or none of the above if it is a short field trip! Examples of free field trips I have taken my children on include:

• visiting a local nature center;
• visiting a local farm to see baby goats;
• visiting another neighbor to see their chickens;
• taking a nature walk at a local park;
• visiting the local air port to watch planes land and take off;
• visiting the fire station when they hold an open house;
• visiting free museums and free zoo in the Washington, DC area (where I live);
• visiting local courtroom and sitting through a trial;
• visiting city council meeting;
• visiting train station and watching for trains.

 Moderate expense field trips would include things like:

• take the kids ice skating;
  
• go to a movie matinee;
• go bowling;
• take a ride on the local subway (just to ride the train!);
• take trips to historical sites that have small fee

 More expensive trips might be:

• Go to a glass blowing factory tour; make a glass ornament;
  
• visit museums that charge a fee, like a Children's Museum, Building Museum, Aquarium or Zoo;
• Go to a ceramics shop where you can make a ceramic item;
• Go on a "date" to a local coffee shop or restaurant

We've gone on many field trips through the years. Sometimes the parent (me) can get exasperated when the focus of the field trip (light house and marine museum) are not what the child is interested in (wading in local flooding).

In the early years, I was always looking for learning opportunities. Visiting Nana and Pop Pop in Florida, we visited Ft. Christmas. I was intrigued. My girls were bored to tears.

 We visited a Cabbage Patch Doll Factory.

 Two of my kids went to Space Camp

But some of our best field trips, I did not attend. My girls participated in a co-op, and the group visited Harper's Ferry, West Virginia (which I did attend)

New York City

and even Europe. Talk about expensive! The kidlet had to work to pay for that one!

But some of the best field trips were just plain free. When your kid just needs a break, sometimes it is just more productive to get out of the house and experience nature.

So look at your year. Maybe plan one Friday a month to set aside as a field trip day. Adjust this idea as you need to for your budget and for what is available in your area, but consider a schedule like this:

• September: zoo
• October: orchard/farm to pick apples and/or pumpkins
• November: Visit an area of early American interest (thinking of Thanksgiving). I might go to my local Sandy Spring Museum, Sandy Spring, MD
• December: attend a showing of The Nutcracker, or visit a living nativity or some special activity that has been scheduled for Christmas;
• January: Go ice skating;
• February: go to the local natural history museum or building museum;
• March: go on a nature walk and look for signs of spring;
• April: visit a location where you can observe cherry blossoms
• May: Go to nature center and take a hike. Observe three new bird species and learn about them.
• June: Go to a local park with a lake. Consider renting a canoe or paying for a ride on a pontoon boat.
• July: pick strawberries (June?) or blueberries at local farm. 
• August: go to county fair

Other members of the Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Review Crew are also participating in the 5-Days of Homeschool Encouragement blog hop. To read more posts, please click on the link below.

Glass Blowing Shop - Wednesday Field Trip

Well, my week got somewhat derailed, so I am late posting this. Sick kidlet, so mommy goofs off. (ya know... laundry, raking leaves...)

On Wednesday we had the wonderful opportunity to visit a glass blowing artist's factory. My son got to make a glass ornament! His older sister was so jealous... ("I never got to do that!...)

McFadden Art Glass in Baltimore  allowed our homeschool group to come in for a tour and to make glass art projects.  First we were given some information about how one works with glass. Then my son discussed with Mr. McFadden what he wanted to make and what colors. He decided on a Christmas ornament.

First, there is an oven where steel rods are heated. (I didn't write down temperatures, but each oven is real hot... I think one of the ovens was at least 2000 degrees...) The steel has to be heated so that the glass will stick to it, and not harden and shatter immediately.

 The rod is taken from the heating oven to the oven with the molten glass, and is then dipped into the molten glass.

The hot blob of glass gets dipped into the colored glass particles.

The glass blog gets heated again to melt the colors and make it ready to be worked with. I love the way Mr. McFadden lets the kids do as much of it as they can. It's scary, but cool. So, next the rod with the glass blog comes out and gets worked around a bit on the cold steel table.

 The rod begins to get hot, so it gets cooled down in a special water fountain. 

Another member of our group helped out and blew air into the ornament while JD kept the rod turning and worked on shaping the ornament with a tool.

 When the ornament was the right size, the glass was scored so that with a tap it would separate from the glass sticking to the steel rod.

 Then, by touching the hot steel to the top of the ornament, the hot glass can be worked with again to make the glass loop that the ornament will hang from. It is manipulated with tools until it is just perfect.

When it is finally done, it cannot be taken home yet. It is carefully carried to the cooling oven, where it will be cooled slowly over 12 hours so that it doesn't crack and break. Then we will get to take it home.

Field Trips, September/October

Okay, so really, I really do home school, too! I know, lately it's been nothing but reviews.

In our home school this year we are taking a field trip every week or two, and it is my intention to blog about our field trips. Sadly, I have already let at least one trip slip by without even a photograph. I think I got there only to find my camera battery dead. I remember taking a couple of photographs... I guess they're probably on my dead camera... Maybe I'll get back here and stick them in later, but for now I'll just update.

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Our first field trip of the year I have absolutely no photographs of yet. Maybe on the dead camera, but I can't even find the cord to transfer photos to my computer, so I'm not doing very well in the photo department... (images below have been gleaned from web searches)

We went to Black Hills Regional Park and had a pontoon boat tour of Little Seneca Lake, looking for eagles, beavers, and other signs of nature.

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In September we visited the Clara Barton House, in Glen Echo, MD. I have lived nearby most of my life, but this is the first time I visited.
Clara Barton House, Glen Echo, MD

I learned that:
• The house was built for Clara Barton and the Red Cross in the early 1900s and given for FREE by the developers of Glen Echo, who were seeking a celebrity to live at their new development in the hopes of attracting tourists.
• The "Angel of the Battlefield", also known for her services during the Civil War, was actually not a nurse, but a college graduated teacher and Civil Servant to the U.S. Patent Office. (She was the first woman ever to hold a clerkship with the federal government.)
• The Red Cross existed before Clara Barton. After the Civil War, Clara Barton was a speaker and traveled speaking for awhile, but had a breakdown (mental and exhaustion). Her doctor advised a trip to Europe. While there the Franco Prussian War broke out, and again she served as an angel of mercy on the battlefield. While there she learned of the Red Cross organization in Switzerland.
• After the Franco Prussian War, Clara Barton returned to America and founded the American Red Corss, and the first major relief effort of the Red Cross was helping after the Johnstown Flood of 1889.
• One of the first disasters the Red Cross (which Clara Barton founded) responded to was a devastating hurricane's aftermath in Galveston, TX in 1900.

Clara Barton was born Christmas Day, 1821 and died April 12, 1912

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Calvert Marine Museum; Drum Point Screw Pile Lighthouse

In October we went to the Calvert Marine Museum on Solomon's Island in southern Maryland.

We had a behind-the-scenes tour. I finally know the differences between a "skate" and a "ray".

We climbed the Drum Point Lighthouse. The "shed" on the outside of the deck was an "automatic flush toilet" (translated -- an outhouse where the refuse went straight into the sea...) in the days of its use.

And, one of the highlights of the field trip was the particularly high tide. The water was coming up onto land through a sewer grate, and the pool of water we found in the yard by the water's edge was teaming with minnows, which was really cool. JD had to get in and try to catch one. He failed, but had fun trying.