Top 5 Ideas for Homeschooling Field Trips

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As a homeschool instructor,you may want to incorporate a special homeschooling field trip into your curriculum. This is not only beneficial to the student, but you can also document this in your homeschool portfolio.

When deciding what venues you would like to use as field trips, you need to figure out what you want your students to get out of the field trip. While some homeschool parents enjoy taking their children to the more traditional science museum or zoo, many others choose to participate in apprenticeship types of venues.

These type of trips involve students getting an early, hands-on experience of trades and/or careers that they can learn from that will most benefit and prepare them for providing an income for themselves and their future families.

Many traditional schools incorporate this type of vocational learning into their curricula, in the form of shop class or other electives, so it is not uncommon. Here a few ideas for this very useful portion of your child's education.

Bakery. Your best option when finding a vocational based field trip is a venue that involves a great deal of entrepreneurship. Many young individuals are often only faced with the employment side of the economy and never usually see what the business owners do on a daily basis. Bakeries offer a great way to expose your children to that side of it. Students will not only be given an opportunity to understand business but they can also learn a very useful trade in the process. Contact your local bakery and ask if your students can stop by for an hour or so and talk to you about what they do for a "school" project. For older students, there may also be volunteer opportunities that your students can participate in, with the bakery.


Factory or distribution center. These venues offer another great way for students can get a background insight to how things in their world operate. Students will be able to see how products on shelves at their local grocery store are produced and distributed, what it takes to operate these centers and a bit about the benefits of productivity.Call your local center's human resources and see if you could set up a small field trip to visit.

Farm or nursery. Again, another great entrepreneurship/trade skill enhancing field trip.Students can learn how to operate a farm both as a business and as a trade. Students can also volunteer for these business to help them learn more. Call your local farm or nursery and ask the business owner to help arrange a field trip or volunteer opportunity.

Workshop or training course. While it is true that your students are being homeschooled, they may want to learn or find out more about a particular interest outside of academia. Woodworking courses, cooking classes, business seminars and career fairs are all good places to get experience and find out information that will help them after they finishing their homeschooling education.

Take your child to work day. What better way to get real life experience, then seeing what your parent does for a living. Whether the parent is a business owner, manager or an employee they could gain a great deal of experience from different areas. Depending on what the parent does or where he works, you may need special permission for your student to attend the workplace.