My family had the privilege of trying the
Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal for this review to use in conjunction with my own homeschool curriculum. This is a Schoolhouse Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.
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Field trips are always a welcome get away for my family. I especially love the field trips that are educational, but any field trip whether for eduction or fun or both are great because they get us out of the stuffy house and let us see stuff we would have never been able to see otherwise. I also love to document my experiences by photography, sketching, scrapbooking, journaling, and blogging because they are outlets where I can be creative while writing about my adventures in life. I believe that it is easier to actually learn by doing and seeing. Field trips let us learn in this way.
The Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal is a neat spiral bound book with pages to fill out. The Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal can be used for one child or the whole family. It lets you record your trips in the journal in a fun way. It has colorful pages that are appealing to children as well as adults. The pages are made from a lightweight card stock so they won't tear easily. The front and back of the cover is shiny so if there was a little bit of moisture that spills on it you can wipe it off easily, but it won't repel a lot so be careful around liquids. The book has 64 pages total and 9 different sections which are listed in the table of contents with their page numbers. This is a scrapbook, a field trip
recorder, a 4H event recorder, a nature journal, and a family trip
memory book wrapped up into one neat workbook.
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| Jaedan filling out his experiences at the Sluggerville Museum on the Field Trip Pages. |
The Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal also has a lot of pages that are fun and get your creative juices flowing. In the front of the book it has a page to fill out the name of the person or family the book belongs to. Then it has the
Table of Contents listed to easily find the pages you are looking for in the book. Next it has pages about
Preparing For A Field Trip. These pages have great tips and things to do before you go and when you get there in checklist format. After these pages there are
Field Trip Ideas. These ideas are so versatile and are in a easy to read chart. The
Places I've Explored Maps are great to fill out what you've experienced around your state, around the United States, and in the World. The
Field Trip Pages have you fill out things about a
specific trip, like: where it was, date, a map of the place, a list of books to
read about the place (that should have been read before the trip, but
can be read later as well), a spot for a photo or drawing, emergency
contact plan, and a list of things wanting to be seen or done on one
page and then a page opposite that one where you can write a story of
your day and something that you never want to forget after you have made
the trip. There are 10 sets of these pages. There are also
My Special Spot Pages that document a small (about 20' X 20') section of wildlife throughout all four seasons in the year. These pages have a place for a photograph of the spot during that season, a place to record: location, date, temperature, and rainfall; notes, and a grid to draw an aerial map. After these are
As I See It Pages. These pages have 7 that have fun prompts and 10 pages that you can complete as you desire. These are made to capture things in sketch format instead of words.
Included
in most Apologia Educational Ministries products, they have a link to a
list of helpful third party websites to go along with your product.
These you have to log in for to have access to with the password
provided in the product. For the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal
extras they had all sorts of links to explore online about field trips
and journaling, including: The Importance of Field Trips, Field Trip
Ideas and Searches, Maps, Field Guides and Identification, Resources,
Natural History Museums, Science Museums, Children's Museums, Aquariums
and Zoos, National Parks, State Parks, Botany, Animals, Earth Science,
Aeronautics and Space, Human Body/Biology, Chemistry and Physics,
History and Government, Community and Municipal, Business and Industry,
Culture, Additional Field Trip Websites, and Art Journaling.
How We Are Using This Journal:
My whole family has been using the Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal for different things that we have explored since we got it. Here are just a few of them...
- When my son, Jaedan, and I went to Louisville Kentucky May 22nd through the 24th I brought the Apologia Educational Ministries Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal with us just in case we found the time between studying history and
being with our group to fill out some pages in it. Our trip there included seeing two very cool museums. I let him fill out two sets of field trip pages for both museums because I wanted his thoughts in the book about our trip and I knew I would be writing a blog post about it later too.
- On Memorial Day, the day after our mother son trip to Louisville, my family met my parents and my sister, Melody, and her two kids at Claggett Creek Park in Keiser Oregon. Melody had came all the way from Nevada to visit. We had a lovely Memorial Day eating picnic food at a picnic table there and watching our kids play on the playground. I filled out the field trip pages for our picnic, but included what the rest of my family thought about the trip as well.
- We also went to Everfree Northwest in Seattle Washington, which is a My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Convention, as a family on May 30th. Even though this trip was mostly for fun we still had a blast. I filled out the field trip pages for Everfree, but included what the rest of my family thought about the trip as well.
We also love the As I See It pages where you get to draw what you see and the My Special Spot pages where you can record seasonal changes in nature out in the wild. We haven't gotten to fill out the My Special Spot pages completely because we haven't had this book for that long, but we plan on using this whole book to travel, study, explore, observe, record, document, and create memories that we can remember as a family from years to come.
I like that field trips are only limited by imagination. You can do virtual field trips or real ones. You can go just in your own backyard or across the world. It is up to you what you do with the Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal. Let your imagination go and explore!
BUY IT
You can purchase the
Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal on the Apologia Educational Ministries website for only $22.00! You can download sample pages on there as well.
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