Immerse your family in the JOY of homeschooling!

Stefanie
Jul 28
5 min read

Are you new to homeschooling? Wondering how to start? Or maybe you’re a veteran

homeschooler looking for fun ways to enrich your homeschooling experience? No matter

where you are in your homeschool journey, I have some exciting ideas for you!

My name is Stefanie, and I run one of the largest homeschool communities in the Tampa Bay area, Gulfside Art & Science Academy. Field trips have added incredible depth and joy to our homeschool experience, and they can do the same for yours. With a background in Event and Travel Management since 1999, I’ve used that expertise through GASA to offer educational field trips, classes, and mentoring for homeschool families. Now entering our ninth year of homeschooling our youngest, Sedona, I’ve had the privilege of coordinating around 170 field trips. These events are organized purely on a volunteer basis; GASA isn’t a school, co-op, or business. It’s simply my way of helping fellow parents make their homeschool journey the best it can be.

Florida is a haven for homeschoolers looking for exceptional real-world, hands-on experiences.

Children who are educated in this way absolutely have an advantage - academically, socially,

culturally, and more. Yes, homeschoolers have all the opportunities that brick-and-mortar

school students have... and 100 times more! With homeschooling, we, the parents, customize

our children’s education by choosing the method of learning, curriculum, and schedule. We

can teach from all voices, rather than the one that the school echoes. We can delve deeper

into their interests through more authentic, hands-on, experience-based learning rather than

just books alone and the school’s few “token” field trips.

My daughter has consistently done 50-60 field trips every single year! Those field trips include museums, facility tours, outside classes, science labs, cooking classes, Broadway and theater productions, animal encounters, and more. Field trips have brought learning to life for my daughter and the students who attend GASA events. Let me break it all down a bit...

HOW do we do all that?

The world is our classroom, and we school year-round for the most flexibility. Yes, we do a lot

of field trips every year, plus travel, but we are not unschoolers. We are eclectic

homeschoolers - the rest of her school days include written, more structured schoolwork.

Because all of this is spread over the entire year, we might do written work 1, 3, or 5 days a

week, and every week that number might be different. It all averages out, quite beautifully

actually.

WHY do we do it?

Mark Twain said, “Don’t let your schooling interfere with your education.” Simply, you will

sooner forget what you have read than what you have experienced. Reading is one-

dimensional; even watching a documentary brings only a second dimension into the mix. We incorporate field trips into our curriculum to engage and stimulate learning and spark interest in a more 3-and-4-dimensional way.

WHO can do this?

There are many homeschool groups in our area that host field trips, but remember, not every

field trip has to be done in a group. You can do them yourselves or with a few friends.

However, the advantage of booking as a group is that we get some sort of benefit – whether it be a discount, a guided tour, or some other perk or educational benefit. For instance, many

museums won’t do guided tours, unless you book a group. But, anyone can book a group! Go ahead and try to host some events yourself too.

Check out the Homeschool Helps page & click on GASA's Field Trip List for a LARGE list of field trips we have done all over Florida to get you started!

WHAT can you do to incorporate these events into your curriculum?

Be intentional when planning field trips and curriculum. I prefer to group my field trips with

her current studies and other activities to develop well-rounded unit studies. I try to immerse

her in the subject in every way possible through related activities. Here are some great

examples of subject-based experiences:

HISTORY: Historical tours of St. Augustine (oldest, continually occupied, Spanish settlement in the US.); Henry Plant Museum; Tallahassee (Old Capitol, Capitol); Gainesville FL Museum of Natural History; The Chinesgut Hill Manor Historical Home (history and slavery); Florida

Holocaust Museum; SS American Victory Ship Tour (merchant marine ship from WWII); Tampa Bay History Center (Florida history); Melton’s Machinery Museum (antique machines, hands-on experiences with old-world machinery); Safford House Museum (historical landmark in Tarpon); Ybor City History Tours; May-Stringer Victorian house; Titanic, the Exhibition Tour and Titanic Dinner Theater Experience; Chocolate Kingdom (history of chocolate and hands-on chocolate experience); and Presidents Hall of Fame Museum.

GOVERNMENT/BUSINESS: Edgecomb Courthouse “Journey Through Justice” tour; BayNews9 Studio “Behind the Scenes” tour; Tampa Firefighter Museum & Fire Station; USPS Post Office; Port Tampa Bay Harbor tour; Pinellas County Solid Waste “Waste to Energy tour;” Tampa International Airport tour; Publix Dairy Plant; and Enterprise Village (5th grade) and Finance Park (8th grade): Must preregister with a group. 6-week curriculum program to do at home and then a full-day, hands-on experience at the Stavros Institute.

THE ARTS: Chihuly Glass & Morean Arts Center; Dunedin Fine Arts Center; Leepa Ratner Art

Museum; Tampa Museum of Art; The Dali Museum; Safety Harbor Art & Music Center; and

Straz Center for Broadway shows, opera and children’s theater.

EDUCATIONAL CLASSES: The Tampa Bay area is also home to some amazing educational classes offered by local organizations! Here are a few of our favorites:

- Tampa Bay Watch Discovery Center – science classes, labs, and dissections

- Clearwater Moccasin Lake – hands-on science and nature classes

- Clearwater Marine Aquarium / The Florida Aquarium – science and marine life classes

- Emeril Lagasse Kitchen House & Culinary Garden – Edible Education Cooking Classes. Not only do the students learn to cook using traditional methods, but they also learn about seed-to-table organic growing, geographic origins of the herbs and vegetables used, and the history about the foods being prepared.

(We did classes at each of these places for several years. They all have a lot to offer!)

My favorite way to incorporate field trips is to create a Unit Study, and this is how I do it:

- CHOOSE: a subject that’s interesting!

- EXPLORE: books & poems, online materials, go to the library

- WATCH: documentaries, movies, or video clips

- DO: worksheets, projects or lapbooks – print them from a website or make your own!

- CREATE: Make it fun! Add crosswords, word finds, coloring, crafts or art projects.

- GET HANDS-ON: Make a posterboard, cook a recipe, or do an experiment.

- EXPERIENCE: Go on a FIELD TRIP! See the places or artifacts. Taste the food. Hear the music. Use all your senses!

Wow! I know that’s a lot of information. You can find even more here on my (ad-free) website. I have lots of FREE unit studies, printables, and lists and links for “free and cheap” online programs, your Portfolio Evaluation, your Letter of Intent, curriculum we personally used for each grade level, as well as links to my homeschool videos about field trips, science experiments, immersive education, cooking, and so much more.

All homeschoolers can also join my field trips, simply for the cost of the field trip itself.