Field Trips for Homeschool High Schoolers- Special Replay

The Homeschool Highschool Podcast

Field Trips for Homeschool High Schoolers- Special Replay

July 04, 2023

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Field Trips for Homeschool High Schoolers- Special replay.

Field Trips for Homeschool High Schoolers

When you have homeschooling high schoolers, they are BUSY! Academics and extracurriculars fill their schedules while they build their powerful transcripts. It is easy to forget field trips when homeschoolers hit the high school academics.

Don’t miss out! Field trips are useful academic experiences, even for high schoolers!

Sabrina and Kym share about favorite field trips with their teens as well as the trips that did not happen, but they wish they had. (Check this post about a favorite field trip fail.)

Field trips can be valuable for both co-ops and for individual homeschooling families. We asked our East Coast homeschool 7th Sisters about their favorite field trip experiences. Check out this post for fabulous field trip ideas for co-ops (but they will work for families, too).

Here are the most basic homeschool field trips for teens:

(…some of which our teens have loved…and some not so much. Just ask our teens about our “dam field trip” one rainy, spring day.)

Science based
- Botanical gardens
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Wastewater treatment facilities
  - Our teens will NEVER forget their walks across the footbridges over the wastewater ponds at our local treatment facility
- Dams
- Zoos
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Aquariums
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Museums
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Ranger-led events at state or national parks
- Visits to blood bank
  - Unfortunately, several of our teens passed out as they watched blood being drawn…so we did not repeat this trip often!
- Nature hikes
- Amusement park
  - Physics, you know…
History based
- Architectural tours of historic towns
  - These can be fun if you have the right tour leader
- Historic town special events
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Docent led tours of historic homes
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Guide-led tours of national or state historic sites
- Attend a re-enactment
- Restaurants with food from a country your family is studying
Arts
- Concerts
  - Think especially about music-genre concerts that your teens have not experienced yet.
    - These do not necessarily need to become favorites of your teens, however, they are always enriching experiences
    - Some concerts that our teens have enjoyed include:
      - Military band concerts
      - World music concerts
      - Local orchestra and choir concerts
- Plays
  - You can sometimes get free or inexpensive tickets to dress rehearsals. Vicki’s co-op attended several Gilbert and Sullivan operetta dress rehearsals that were marvelous.
- Museums
  - Look for free-admission days or group discounts
- Arts and Crafts shows
Career Exploration
- Visits to construction sites
- Visits to small businesses
- Visits to chiropractor or other medical professional
- Visits to recording studio
- Interviews with folks at church who have interesting careers
- Visit to sports-team’s facility
- Attend a career fair
- Visit a military recruiter
- Volunteer work and interview staff (our friend Ticia Messing is an expert on finding volunteer opportunities for teens)
- College tours

Preparing for field trips?

We suggest that teens expect to be active learners at field trips. That means they need to know that there will be some things expected of them in order for the trip to count as good academics.

Here are some tips:

Talk about the field trip ahead of time.
- Explain how it is pertinent to some of their studies.
- Give them hints about things to look for that are relevant to their courses.
Come prepared with questions for docents or guides. Talk about potential questions ahead of time.
- Make sure you compliment teens (after the field trip) for their thoughtful questions and participation.
  - This is good practice for the networking skills they will need in their adult life!
Have teens write a response paper, essay or create a Powerpoint or Prezi about the trip.
- Then present it at co-op or family gathering.
Use field trips to level up courses or earn a special course credit. Check out this post on how to log hours for credit.
Remember, don’t KILL the field trip by overdoing the academic part!
Many field trips can be turned in some way into Career Exploration.

Join Sabrina and Kym for this inspirational chat. Also, check out this post

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