Nothing teaches better than hands-on experience. Taking your childcare class on a field trip is an exciting and rewarding exercise in education and entertainment. Kids always have a fresh outlook on life and adults often learn just as much from the trips as they do.
If possible, you can plan a field trip to coincide with the topic your class is studying. You can make a tradition of taking a particular age group each year to a special place. In any case, everyone enjoys getting out of the classroom to experience something new.
Before we look at some ideas for childcare field trips, let’s discuss the benefits of field trips and the planning involved in a successful adventure.
The benefits of field trips
New places and experiences allow children to see how things are different and yet the same from place to place.
- The children get the opportunity to use the information they learned in class.
- They practice new life skills and interpersonal skills.
- You can explore the community.
- The children are active and have fun while learning new things.
- They can interact as a group in a new setting, bonding with classmates.
- Children come away with new cultural experiences.
Sometimes a lesson that did not make sense in the classroom becomes clear during practical application in a real-world setting.
Planning a field trip
For a successful field trip, involve the kids in deciding where to go and think out everything in advance.
- How will you transport the children?
- Is there a fee for entry at the field trip location?
- Do the kids need to bring a sack lunch?
- What will you do if a parent cannot afford additional payments for the field trip?
Prepare the kids by reading books, looking at pictures, and watching videos related to the field trip.
This is also a great time to go over how to behave in public, using good manners, and staying with the group. Rehearse what to do in an emergency and discuss some of the sights and sounds they will experience.
Childcare management software can streamline some of the activities needed to get ready for the field trip. You can send permission slips and parental or chaperon requests via email or a parent portal. Parents fill out an online form and submit it instead of sending slips of paper back and forth.
Calendar based enrollment applications can be used to create a "field trip" class and enter the names of those who will attend. You can build a custom roster to use on the trip to keep track of the kids, or you can use a smartphone-based app paired with bar-coded bracelets to take attendance before you leave, when you arrive, and when you are ready to return.
Parents can pay online by credit card or give permission for an extra fee to be charged as part of a bank draft. Childcare management software solutions automate many of the administrative tasks needed for undertaking a trip with a large group of small children.
Places to go and see and learn
Almost anywhere away from the daycare facility can make a good field trip.
A local park
Sometimes you just want to be in nature but remain in a familiar area. A trip to the local park to play on different equipment, eat outside, and just run around all day is the cure for being cooped up in a classroom because of intense heat or months of cold weather.
You can still fit in some education by talking about why trees have leaves and having a scavenger hunt for various items related to a science lesson.
A farm
Farms within driving distance are favorite places to take children who have lived their whole lives in the city. Show them where eggs, milk, vegetables and grains come from. Find a farmer who loves to talk about farming at the level the kids can understand. If they are lucky, the children might get the chance to milk a cow or pet a chicken.
You may be able to plan a field trip that shows the difference between running a farm where you grow crops and a dairy.
The local bakery
How many kids have seen a large-scale bakery? Maybe you can take class time to mix up dough and bake some loaves of bread. You can tell the students how yeast makes the dough rise so the bread will be fluffy in the middle.
Then while you are on the field trip, show them how a big bread factory performs the same tasks but with machines, large vats and conveyor belts. The kids may get to take a small loaf home.
The library
Many children have never visited their local library. They see books at school but never at home. Take a group to the library to learn how many choices there are and that the books can be checked out without paying. All they have to do is take good care of them and bring them back on time, so someone else can enjoy them.
Then, let them see what goes on behind the scenes at the library. They can watch as a book is returned, scanned, sorted and taken back out the shelves. They might have a chance to see what the library does with books it no longer wants to keep or how they prepare new books for the shelf.
The fire or police station
Children still want to be firefighters or police officers when they grow up. Taking them to a fire station or police station builds on that dream by showing working equipment. Pair the trip with safety week to reinforce lessons learned in class. If you're lucky, one of the parents may be a police officer or firefighter and able to come and talk to the students before the trip to tell them what to expect.
The supermarket
Most children have been to a grocery store, but they have never seen the storerooms in the back or how fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, and fish arrive at the store and are made ready for sale.
You can talk about nutrition, where the food begins and travels to where it is sold, and the type of people who do the different kinds of work, from farmers and truck drivers to the grocery store staff, butchers, and fishmongers.
After the trip
Once the children come back, always have them draw, write, or create thank you notes to send to the people who showed them their workplace. If you had parents help or special teachers monitor games, send them thank you notes, too.
Everyone likes seeing new places. The adult chaperons probably never saw behind the supermarket warehouse doors either. Listening to the children talk about the trip on the way back to school and for the rest of the week shows you how important it is to provide these experiences.
