Home schooling is, in my opinion, the best type of schooling there is. You can be certain your children are learning skills that are important for life such as filling out job applications, balancing checkbooks, cooking, frugal spending, and more. This is in addition to the typical education of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. But staying at home all the time can get boring for kids and parents. Field trips are excellent ways to get out of the house for awhile and incorporate fun with learning.
But what if you’re simply too tired to drag the kids to a museum, library, zoo, or botanical garden, and you’re craving some time for yourself? This is where the Square Foot Field Trip comes in handy. Although not an official outing, you and the kids can get outside for a bit and children will enjoy learning all about a small area of their own yard.
Materials Needed:
4 Popsicle sticks per child (or anything you can poke into the ground to mark their area.)
A 12-inch ruler
A magnifying glass (one per child works best so there are no fights)
A notebook and pencil for each child
Directions:
Go outside and mark off a 12″ x 12″ patch of yard for each child. If you don’t have a yard, you can do this at the park. I tried to make sure they were at least a few feet apart. Again, this cuts down on fights. Put one Popsicle stick at each corner of the individual child’s square.
Give each child a magnifying glass, pencil and notebook and tell them to explore their patch of land. What’s growing there? What bugs can they find? Are there any feathers, bits of wrappers, or interesting rocks?
Let them explore and make notes until they get restless. This may be anywhere from five minutes to a half-hour, depending on how many interesting things they find.
Afterward I would have my kids write about what they found and draw pictures. This Square Foot Field Trip worked really well when I lived on the East Coast since we would do it each time the season changed. They could then review their notes and see what they found during Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter and have a firsthand account of the changing landscape.