BJU Press Blog

field trips

Time to Refresh Your Homeschool?

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use computer to refresh your homeschool
The holidays have just finished, and you’re probably about to get back into the same old same old. But how did it go those last few days of homeschooling before the holiday break? If you left off feeling worn out and tired, you may not be so eager to dive back in. If that’s the case, now may be the perfect time to refresh your homeschool. Here are a few ideas for adding excitement and energy into your routine.

Add in Field Trips

If you weren’t able to include many field trips last year, take a few moments to plan out some places you might like to visit this year. Or you can leave room for some spontaneous field trips. Field trips are great opportunities to solidify what your children have learned, but they also present new learning opportunities as well. If you visit a zoo, your children may be able to see live examples of different habitats and how animals live together, but they will also get to see many other aspects of life science that may not be covered in their textbooks.

For example, I recently had an opportunity to visit the South Carolina Aquarium, located in Charleston Harbor. In addition to its wide range of aquatic habitats, the South Carolina Aquarium is also home to the Sea Turtle Care Center, which gives visitors an up close and personal look into the veterinary care of sea turtles. They even had some of their instruments on display. History museums, science museums, art galleries, zoos, and aquariums are all full of opportunities to get your children excited about learning!

Focus on Hands-on Activities

Sometimes, it’s easy to let hands-on activities go by the wayside. You don’t always have all the supplies, and maybe your children already have a good grasp of the material. But hands-on activities have a way of bringing even the most ordinary lessons to life. Many of the activities suggested in BJU Press textbooks straddle the line between play and learning. Your children may be learning about the moon and how its surface was formed, but they’re also getting to make their own play dough and getting to shape the dough themselves. And hands-on activities aren’t just limited to science and art. There are many ways to incorporate hands-on experiences into history and math. Such activities are also great for getting kinesthetic and visual learners engaged in learning.

Reorganize

Nothing says “fresh start” like a newly cleaned space. Before the books start flying again, take a moment to assess your homeschool space, clean it, and maybe reorganize it. If you have a spare room, you could set up your own dedicated homeschool space. Or, if you’ve been using a dedicated homeschool space for a while and it’s starting to feel too much like a brick and mortar school, you can relocate your lessons to the kitchen table instead. Regardless of your set up, you can learn from some of the tips other homeschool moms have found useful. Feeling more adventurous? Here are some other ideas on how to add life to your homeschool space!

We hope your new year of homeschooling goes well! Do you have any ideas for refreshing your homeschool this year? Please share yours in the comments!

Reasons to Take a Spontaneous Field Trip

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cowpens field trip
One day near the end of last summer, I sat looking at my Reading 3 Teacher Edition in preparation for the coming school year. One story near the beginning of the book caught my attention—”Alex the Drummer Boy.” It’s a historical fiction piece set in Cowpens, South Carolina, during the Revolutionary War. As I looked more closely at the piece, an idea began to take shape in my mind—we should take a field trip to Cowpens.

Was I crazy? The site was a little over an hour away, and my window of opportunity was small since we would be reading the selection in a couple of weeks. But it was a perfect educational opportunity. A visit to the historical site would not only provide valuable background information for reading the story, it would also build excitement for the upcoming lessons.

We made the trip a few days later, and we were so glad we did. You can read more about our experience in the post Learning Activities That Come Alive.

As a homeschooler, I love having the flexibility to enhance my curriculum with in-the-moment learning experiences like spontaneous field trips. If I had been teaching in a classroom, that trip to Cowpens probably wouldn’t have happened. But since I was a homeschool mom, I could take advantage of the opportunity the curriculum presented me.

Field trips are never easy, even when they are somewhat unplanned. But here are a couple reasons why they’re worth the effort.

A Field Trip Fuels Interest in Learning

There’s nothing like hands-on experiences to whet a child’s appetite for learning. When we returned home from Cowpens, my daughter suddenly couldn’t get enough of Revolutionary War history. She checked out historical fiction and nonfiction books at the library. I saw her play-acting battles and trying to fashion her own Revolutionary War uniforms. She was excited and ready to learn.

A Field Trip Boosts Comprehension

Sometimes field trips can also help students better comprehend what they’re learning. This week, my second-grade daughter and I are going to read a story in reading about non-furry pets. She has never seen a hermit crab, so before we read it, I’m planning to take her on a quick trip to a local pet store to observe a real one in action. Seeing one up-close will help her better understand the point of the story.

Taking spontaneous field trips has become a way for me to incorporate real-life learning into our homeschool, and it has been a fun way for our family to bond while learning. Have you ever taken a spur-of-the-moment field trip? Tell us about it in a comment!

Learning Activities that Come Alive

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learning activities flowers
At the beginning of the school year, I had the perfect opportunity to create some excitement around a historical fiction piece in our Reading 3 curriculum entitled “Alex the Drummer Boy.”

As I read through the story in anticipation of our reading lessons, I realized that the plot is set against the background of the Battle of Cowpens during the Revolutionary War. We live in Greenville, South Carolina, so the Cowpens battlefield is less than an hour away. Why not go visit the battlefield and experience the real-life setting of this story?

A Journey Back in Time

Our family made the trek up to Cowpens somewhat spontaneously on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We took a walking tour of the battlefield, hiking along the historic road that the soldiers themselves marched on. We stood in the wooded areas and pretended to shoot rifles. We watched a documentary about the famous double envelopment military maneuver that won the battle. We saw soldiers’ uniforms and weapons on display and studied maps that depicted the movements of both the British and American troops. It was an incredible educational experience.

And the learning opportunities didn’t end when we drove back to Greenville. As we read “Alex the Drummer Boy” in our reading book, all of those memories of the battlefield resurfaced. As we read, we were able to consult our battlefield map and the photos we took. We checked out a nonfiction book from the library that told the story of Cowpens in detail. The fictional story of Alex came alive in such a way that for weeks I caught my young daughters acting out the story using a metal popcorn container as a drum and a broomstick for a rifle.

Learning Activities that Build Enthusiasm

You won’t be able to travel to experience firsthand the setting of every story, but—with a little imagination and the help of the internet and other sources—you can find learning activities that build excitement for just about any lesson. Here are a few of my go-to sources for inspiration.

  • Teacher’s edition—BJU Press works hard to make learning enjoyable, and most lessons include fun learning activities for introducing or enhancing a lesson.
  • Pinterest—My daughters and I recently used the site to learn how to construct a clubhouse using large boxes. It was a great project to go along with our reading of The Case of the Dognapped Cat in reading. I love how you can search for just about any topic and find ideas for crafts, food, games, and so on. (Be sure to follow BJU Press Homeschool!)
  • The local library—Books and educational videos allow us to dig deep into any subject. Studying mammals in science? Watch some of Planet Earth to be amazed at God’s creation. Learning about early American history? Do what one of my daughters did—check out the entire shelf of books pertaining to the Revolutionary War, and dig deep into the subject.
  • Travel/visitor’s guides—Nothing makes learning exciting like a field trip. Travel brochures and visitor’s guides for your local area are great for discovering educational sites nearby.

As a busy homeschool mom, you probably won’t be able to enhance every lesson with fun activities. But I’ve learned enthusiasm is contagious—if you are enthusiastic about a subject, your child probably will be too. And you’ll be one step closer to inspiring your child for a lifetime of learning.