Love of learning, love of history, love of travel, and love for my kids
all came together in our Experiential Learning trips.
Reading, writing, studying, and discussing are all part of our independent learning adventure. However, the best and most memorable learning is experiential learning! Seeing and experiencing the places we studied makes all the head knowledge come alive!!
In the earliest years,
experiential learning took place close to home.
Going to the zoo, living history farms, children’s museums, and hands-on science museums were a natural and fun part of the preschool and early elementary years. Experiential learning also occurred at home as we looked at skin cells and pond scum under the microscope, watched creatures in their natural habitat on nature walks, identified planets and constellations on clear nights in the country, and performed simple experiments with light and water in our kitchen. Anything we could do to experience our education, we did.
As my budding scholars grew, so did our excursions.
After studying about our earth and its geographical features in the elementary years, we embarked on a two-week experiential learning “Nature’s Wonders” trip through the Southwestern United States. My budding scholars experienced first hand Carlsbad Caverns, the immense White Sands, enormous rock pinnacles at Chiricahua, petrified forests, painted deserts, and of course the Grand Canyon. This active trip was ideal for my young sons allowing them plenty of opportunities to run, jump, climb, and play.
As my young scholars began studying history,
we traveled our state and our country
experiencing the history we had just studied.
The first of these was in late elementary after studying pioneer days, cattle drives, the pony express, and the great migration west during the mid to late 1800s. On our two-week Midwest-Pioneer Tour, we
- followed the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails (and saw real ruts!),
- visited the only Pony Express station in its original location,
- walked where the Oklahoma Land Rush occurred, and
- traversed the same path as the Chisholm Trail cattle drives.
We soaked in the wide-open grassy plains that the Native Americans inhabited for so many years and that the early pioneers encountered on their journey west, walking where they walked and picnicking where they picnicked.
While learning about our state’s history in early middle school, we traveled all around Texas to the early missions and forts established by the Spanish. We followed the road to independence from Mexico beginning with the “first-shot cannon” in Gonzales to the massacre at the Alamo to the ultimate victory at San Jacinto. We stood in Independence Hall and walked the streets of our state’s first seat of government when we were our own nation. On a separate excursion, we visited the state capitol made out of beautiful, locally-mined pink granite and the state cemetery which held the graves of so many people who died fighting for our state’s independence. We walked through the forests of the east, splashed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, drove through the hill country of central Texas, and climbed the canyons in the western desert. While this was our state trip, each state has its own rich history and geography to explore and discover.
Our trips got longer and more involved as the scholars matured.
The culmination of our in-depth study of U.S. History was a 5-week trip through the eastern U.S. on our Early American History Tour. We walked the roads of the earliest colonies of Jamestown, Williamsburg, Plymouth, and Boston; followed the path of Washington and other Patriots in the War of Independence; experienced the struggle of our nation at Civil War sites; and felt what immigrants must have felt when seeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Our nation’s Capitol, White House, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, Smithsonian, and many memorials topped off our trip. These are just a few of the places we visited to experience our nation’s beginning.
The climax of our homeschool journey …
The apex of our world history in-depth study was a 23-day European Historical Tour. History, language, art, architecture, and culture from the time of the Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages, into Renaissance Italy and Elizabethan England, and finally the Modern Era with all its tragedies and wonders were all part of this unforgettable experiential learning trip.
Each experiential learning adventure brought us closer together as a family,
exposed my children to different places and different cultures,
reinforced all they had learned in the “books,”
and hopefully stirred a lifelong love of learning, history, travel,
and multiculturalism.