School & Homeschool Eco-Slanted Field Trip Ideas
August 14, 2008 by Jennifer
Maybe your school pre-plans all school field trips way in advance. Maybe not though. If your child is in a traditional school environment you can suggest that they take some eco-friendly field trips. If you’re homeschooling, gather your homeschool pals, and plan your own eco-excursion.
Now, I knew this aunt of an ex boyfriend who once said she went on a field trip in elementary school to a slaughter house (egad). She noted that this was why she never ate meat (a very eco-friendly habit). However, if slaughter house massacres seem too um, violent, here are some other ideas:
Sponsor or join a beach clean-up. Kids get out into the fresh air, the beaches get cleaned up, and everyone learns a thing or two about where trash goes. Any sort of clean up – park, city, walking trail, makes a good field trip.
Head to a forestry center. Not all states or areas have them, but if your area does, kids usually really enjoy a trip to the center. If your area is missing this sort of center, you can always head to the real forest for some bird watching, tree naming, and so fourth. That’s a good trip all on it’s own.
The recycling center. It’s good to see where things end up. Actually what would be cool is a trip to the recycling center, followed, at a later date with one to the local dump. Kids will know what should be at the recycling center, and be able to spot it at the dump – a good lesson.
Spend some time at a local, natural, organic, fair trade, or just overall sustainable business. This one is better for older kids who are getting interested in business. Let the business owner speak about what makes this business more sustainable than others.
Head out and plant trees. This can be a full on lesson. You can work with tree studies (in whatever format you like), and learn about the life-cycle of trees, how they help people, and so on. Then end the whole lesson with a tree planting day. Go somewhere that can actually benefit. Talk to local city organizations to learn who can benefit.
What other earth-friendly field trips can you think of?
How about a trip to a wind farm? We have several wind turbines near us, and one of them has a viewing gallery that you can climb up to. We did this as part of a unit study on electricity (you can find it on my site) and it was a great success!
Interesting post – thank you.
Me again!! I have been really thinking about this! Do you have the concept of scrap-stores where you are? In the UK the scrap stores get donations from businesses of old paper, boxes, plastic cartons, wallpaper books etc. they don’t need – and the public can go in and buy them (cheap). They would make a great field trip – and then you could use whatever you buy to make recycled art.
Thats it – I promise!!