In the 21st century, kids can virtually visit any place online. However, there’s something to be said for getting out of the house and into the real world to learn and explore. Here are 5 affordable homeschool field trip ideas for middle schoolers that can enhance your curriculum offline!
5 Affordable Homeschool Field Trip Ideas for Middle Schoolers
1. Grocery Stores
Visit your local grocery store and ask if they provide student tours. Some stores employ nutritionists that can teach you and your students how to plan for meals and eat a balanced diet. Even without a tour, it’s also an excellent way to practice budgeting. Give your child a budget and some parameters on what to buy and use grocery shopping as a teaching tool. Extend the learning into the kitchen with math, science, and family consumer science by creating and making new recipes with the family. Work in some of these grocery shopping and saving tips to help plan your lessons! Who knew that a grocery store could provide so much learning?
2. Museums
Many museums offer discounts for educators, including homeschool teachers. As an added bonus, classes are often offered during the day for homeschool students. Depending on the museum, you may find enrichment courses on everything from art, history, nature (outdoor classrooms), textiles, and more. Some museums offer free days to make it even more affordable for your homeschool classroom. Museum tours are often included with the price of admission and may have curricular materials that will help you discuss what your child learned after the field trip.
3. Fire Stations
You may think about fire stations as field trip destinations for elementary students, but experiencing demonstrations on fire safety are incredible refreshers for students and adults as well. For middle schoolers, talking with firefighters can also be a career planning and education idea. Have your student come up with interview questions and write up an article about a career as a firefighter or EMT.
4. Cemeteries
It might sound a little creepy, but visiting a cemetery can be a lesson in history. Look at notable people who are buried in well-known cemeteries throughout your hometown. Discuss the history of the people, look at dates on tombstones to focus on historic time periods. Burial, cultural, and religious practices are often taboo topics, but touring a cemetery can make these topics most accessible to young people without being morbid and disrespectful.
5. National Parks
Visit a National Park with your homeschooler! In fact, the 4th graders get a free annual pass to all National Parks with their Every Kid in a Park program. Free lesson plans are available to find curricular connections for your National Park field trip.
Sometimes escaping the home in homeschool is a great way to extend student learning outside the classroom walls. These 5 affordable homeschool field trip ideas for middle schoolers are fantastic ways for your student to learn more about the community, history, science, math, art, career planning, and more. Preteach at home with some fantastic lessons, many developed by the organizations themselves, and follow-up by processing and discussing what they’ve learned at home.
I didn’t know that some grocery stores do tours … that’s a cool idea!
My kids and I love exploring new museums. We also love visiting places like zoos and botanical gardens.
These are great ideas! I love the idea of a grocery store tour!
These are all great affordable homeschooling field trip ideas for middle school kids. The fire station field trip was always one of my favorite as a kid. Thanks for sharing the affordable ideas.
What a great ideas and this is so exciting, I didn’t know that grocery stores do tours too, Glad you share this ideas
This trip ideas looks great. Kids just love these places.
This five affordable homeschool field trip ideas you have listed here are great and for me, I would love to go for museums because of it’s isolated nature and the beautiful artworks that can be found there.
Great homeschooling field trips. I usually bring daughter nin the grocery store. We only visit cemeteries during November
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I don’t have middle school aged kids yet but these are great field trip ideas in general! We have quite a few museums downtown and my 2 and 4 year old loves to go! For that reason, we have our yearly membership passes to help keep the costs low!