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It’s Field Trip Week, and I’m so psyched. The oldest and I have been toiling away for eight weeks straight. Read on to find out about our first Field Trip Week and for ideas on creating your own.

My goal is to make these weeks enriching without the added pressure of lesson plans and projects. Minimal parent involvement. Minimal.

It’s incredible to have this amount of flexibility. We are required to complete 180 days of school, but we are not on a school schedule. We started early in July.

He was excited, and I was happy to “do school” when we were stuck inside during the hottest parts of summer. The five day/week schedule is working for us. It keeps our days short. 1-1/2 to 2 hours at the most.

I’m looking forward to having fun with real experiences. Not fabricated ones from lesson plans. Those are great, too, don’t get me wrong. Study Canada and have pancakes for dinner? Sign me up!

But after weeks of planning all of our amusement, it’s time to take a step back, relax, and have a good time learning.

Related: 40 Fantastic Field Trips for Homeschoolers!

Day One – Nature Center & Planetarium

Butterfly garden, nature walk, and then it started to pour. Of course we are getting tropical weather during field trip week. No problem, our Nature Center has a planetarium attached. We were super excited to see an old-timey film about stars from the 1900’s, but we got a surprise.

A new film was just in: Incoming! narrated by George Takei.

This was really cool. I can’t remember the last time we saw a planetarium show that was actually up-to-date. The best part was learning about New Horizons and the Pluto flyby from 2015. There’s something about seeing it in a planetarium that is so much cooler than watching Facebook footage on an iPad Mini.

Then we watched the NOVA episode: Chasing Pluto a little later on in the afternoon. It’s nice that we can enjoy some shows that aren’t cartoons. It helps that I’m a wannabe science geek.

Of course I made him a playlist about the solar system for tomorrow morning. I gotta get a shower every couple’a days. Know what I mean?

Day Two- Children’s Museum

The “Going on a Bear Hunt” crafts at our local children’s museum wrapped up our North America Unit with a perfect, little, brown, bear-shaped bow. Our big project was an animal study of the grizzly bear. Today we had a hands-on experience with crafts, sensory play, and role-play in “Alaska.”

This is my favorite part of the children’s museum. They make all of the adorable Pinterest-y stuff that takes an hour to set up and five minutes to play with. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Day 3 – Eric Carle Storytime

Our week wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the library. Well, at least one.

Ten a.m. storytime was Eric Carle books and activities. Our amazing, energetic librarians provided some color, spelling, and body awareness activities and a surprising amount of practice with fine and gross motor skills.

They loved it so much that they wanted to stay for the second story time at eleven, which was a continuation of the activities and books by Eric Carle. This one they did without me. Perfect. Fits right in with my week of minimal parent participation.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See

After reading the book, identifying colors, and sounding out and spelling color words, the kids pinched clothespins to identify animals by their description.

“I’m thinking of the animal that can gallop.”
“I’m thinking of the animal that says ribbit, ribbit.”

From Head to Toe

The librarian read the book and the kids acted out all of the movements. I might add this one to our morning basket.

Camels bend their knees.
Monkeys wave their arms.
Gorillas thump their chests.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

First the librarian made a long alphabet caterpillar while the kids sang the ABCs (like the pin below).
Next, they fed the caterpillar by tossing bean bags labeled with fruit through a big caterpillar mouth. It was adorable.
Finally, they each had their own letter card with an animal on the back and shared the animal, beginning sound, letter name, and other words with the same initial sound.

Day 4 – A Whole Lot of Errands and a Special Lunch

Yep. That’s right. I worked an errand day into field trip week. My poor kid. I dragged him to Target, the thrift store, clothes shopping for me, the grocery store, to pick up his sis and the bank. You can imagine how thrilled he was.

To soften the blow I took him to a surprise lunch at Chuck E. Cheese. Chuck is still pretty special when you’re five.

Today was cool because we had the whole place to ourselves. He climbed the jungle gym, rode the rides, played the games, and ate nearly an entire pizza. Hey, errands make you hungry. Homeschool for the win!

Day 5 – Bounce Around Town

We are being hammered with rain from a passing tropical storm this week, and today was the worst. Normally, I’d be happy hunkered down in our pjs all day, reading books, and watching movies. But this is FIELD TRIP WEEK! There will be none of that.

Chick-fil-A and the undercover mall playgrounds used to be in the regular rotation, but my oldest is getting too big to play with the toddlers. It’s park playgrounds or pay-to-play.

With torrential downpours predicted all day we opted for the latter. Boy was it worth it.

We haven’t been to our local bounce house place in the last two years. Back then it was just okay. Not worth it for a three-year-old with gross motor issues. Today, it was perfect.

The two bigger kids got their exercise climbing, sliding, bouncing, and swinging back and forth on a rope zip line. The baby even had fun, and at 10am on a school day it was safe to let him roam.

This rainy day turned into a Family day of Fun. Love it.

Prepping for Back-to-School

We are back to it next week. I’m looking forward to it; I know the oldest is, too. To get him ready I’ve been dropping hints about what we’ll be learning and strewing a few items and books just out of reach to spark his interest.

He’s already been bringing me books about South America and the five senses – he thinks he outsmarting me. He’s most excited about digging into our new math basket.