Help for Planning Field Trips Quickly and Effectively

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Last month at the GHEA homeschooling convention, I was delighted to meet Michele Zavatsky. Along with her husband George, they are the family-loving authors of the Kids Love Travel Guides. They were both blessed to grow up in families that love to travel. For over a decade, they have been passing on that love to other families by making it easier to create memories with the assistance of their easy-to-use state guide books.

Meeting Michele Zavatsky at GHEA

Do you find planning interactive field trips and spontaneous daycations a little overwhelming? Is it hard to get the creative juices flowing on where to go next? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone came to your state, and purposefully visited every known and unknown attraction, critiqued it, “kid-tested” it, and then gave you all of that info in an organized chart right at your finger tips? How cool would it be to benefit from 1,000 hours of state specific research that another homeschooling-minded family had put together with your family’s pleasure and learning in mind?

The first thing I noticed upon opening my state specific book on Georgia was how well organized it was.  I liked that you could quickly see everything in your region on a chart.  Also, in the back of the book are places listed by theme.  This makes it easy to quickly see everything in your state that is Science or history related. What makes these guides so helpful to families is that it puts all of the information you need to plan a successful trip right at your finger tips.  Our field trip director was able to plan out a whole year of field trips for our homeschool group using the Georgia guide in less than a day!

What the “Ultimate Field Trip Bible” has to offer:

• Quick Tours of Hand-Picked Favorites – to help you choose, if you have a limited time frame
• Day Trip Zone Categories – makes it easy to locate multiple activities in the same area
• Educational Downloads and free lesson plan links
• Quick View Charts – organized by city
• Detailed Descriptions – including pricing, hours, overview, and insider tips
• Separate Activity Index – to locate attractions by theme i.e. Science, Arts, Sports
• Seasonal Listing of Events - ensures that you don’t miss that annual hot air balloon race (My personal favorite!)

Are you going somewhere this summer that you are unfamiliar with?  Would you like to know what all that region has to offer?  Recently, my mom surprised my sister-in-law and I with plane tickets to Williamsburg, Virginia. This is the home of Jamestown, the first permanent colony, and Yorktown, where the American Revolution ended. But with only a week to plan what do you do?  Thankfully, I had just discovered this series and I was so impressed with how well the information was laid out and organized that I contacted Michele to order a second book. By reading the quick overviews, it was easy to map out how we wanted to spend our sacred 2.5 days there.  Within 30 minutes, we solidified what we didn’t want to miss and had the tools to know how we would fit it all in. Thanks, Michele for saving us hours of internet research! The Virginia guide book was just what I need to plan our trip quickly and easily.

You can find out more info and order your state specific guide by visiting their website at www.KidsLoveTravel.com.

Beth discovered how fun learning can be when she began homeschooling in 2003. She considers homeschooling to be a treasured blessing.On the path with her are her 2 boys and husband John, who is her biggest supporter and fan. Somehow she has enabled her frog loving outdoor boys to love tough subjects like Latin, Writing and Grammar. (She is not kidding!) Now if she could only get them to eat all their vegetables. Beth loves capturing life’s precious moments with her camera and decorating them with Photoshop. You can visit her blog at Pages of Our Life.