For a homeschooling family, field trips are a part of everyday life. Your child probably accompanies you on grocery store visits, vacations, and day trips and learns a lot during all of this, but it’s always good to look up opportunities especially for educational purposes.
Homeschool email lists or groups are a particularly great way of finding opportunities to teach your child more about anything. For those in most medium or large cities, there will be a homeschooling group active nearby that you can join to stay appraised of new opportunities on a regular basis. Email lists are particularly effective in communicating what’s happening, as individual members can send out notices that they’re heading to a particular spot and organize outings, ask questions on where to find particular activities or lessons, and so on. You can learn a lot about activities available for homeschoolers by finding the group or email list closest to you.
A great way to do something out of the ordinary is to spend a weekend being a tourist in your own home town. Get the local tourism bureau’s guides to the area, check out online recommendations for places to visit and things to do, and plan a trip itinerary with your kids, then go on an expedition with a picnic or snack packed for mid-afternoon. Bring bulky cameras and dress in tacky tourist clothes if you like. This can be hilariously fun, and you will probably discover places you never knew existed within your own city!
Museums and cultural events are great places to teach your young students lessons. If you have a local science museum or art gallery, a cultural group that puts on events for the public, or a historical archive, pay them a visit and see what you can find out. You will likely learn more local history than you would in a textbook, and many cultural experiences are one-of-a-kind day trips your kids won’t forget.
Parks and recreation departments frequently offer extra-curricular programs that cover a variety of cultural activities, arts, crafts, sports, and other such lessons or groups. They may cost a nominal fee to enroll in, but if your child expresses an interest in a particular activity, he or she can explore it further.
Public schools may also offer your children extra-curricular activities, though this varies from place to place. You will have to check with your local school board to see if they allow homeschoolers to enroll in any after-school clubs or activities. Sometimes, homeschoolers are allowed to come along on field trips or join the school’s clubs.
Community college is another fantastic place to find activities. Often, mature teenagers are welcome in such activities as they hold. You might even consider concurrent enrollment – having your child attend a college class or two in addition to their high school curriculum. This can help a lot with college admissions later, as well as allow your student to experience higher education in a very different setting than they are used to.
With some work put into discovering opportunities, you and your family can be enjoying a number of different activities and using them to teach your children everything from life skills to specific subjects.