Field Trip Journals

Apologia Educational Ministries is a company that I have been a fan of since I began homeschooling over 5 years ago.
They have come out with a new type of product, once which I have never seen anything like it before.  I am lucky to have been chosen to review it.
It is their new Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal. 


About The Company:
 Apologia Educational Ministries, in my opinion, is most well known for their science selection of products.  They have won multiple awards in many categories.  While they do offer a wide variety of products from basic curriculum to online classes and more, one of the really neat things that they do is fully support the homeschooling community by holding retreats.  Some of them are online and some of them are live!


About The Product:

The Exploring Creation Field Trip Journal is simple really. It is over 60 pages ready for your creativity to be added. 
It begins with some preparing for a field trip tips. While most of us are mommas and know how to take our kids out places, this section offers some helpful tips to make the most out of the field trip. 
The next section talks about Field Trip ideas.  This is divided into 10 categories.  Each category has a list of field trip ideas, some are simple, some are extravagant.  There is also a password to log into the book online for even more ideas!
The next section is about “Places I’ve Explored.”  There is a 2 page spread for places in your state, another one for places in the United States, and the final 2 page spread is for places all over the world.
Our favorite part comes next.
It is the section called “Field Trip Pages.”  This section is used for specific field trips. This section has you take personal notes, either on the field trip or when you get back, (once my kids even did it in the car on the way home).  There is a place to draw something that has to do with the trip. A place to list any books you read in preparation for this field trip.   There is a section where you would write down the “Story of my day” and a section to write down “something I never want to forget.”
The next part is “My Special Spot.”  This is for a spot in the wild that you will visit 4 times a year, once each season, and you will document what you see, hear, feel.  Paying attention to all the details you would nature journal this spot, noticing the progressive changes over the seasons.
The “As I See It” pages come next.  In this section you would use your imagination to document your experiences.  This section could be used for journaling with words, with photographs, with drawings, with doodles, or any way you wanted.
The openness and opportunity within this book is only limited by your imagination.
Check out the sample pages by clicking the link on this page!

A day/week in our life:
 
We received our Field Trip Journal just in time. We are a field trip taking family.  We like to be out and about.  One of the big field trips we took shortly after we received this book was to our local Renaissance Faire.  This was our first time going to something like this. It was pretty exciting.

Our thoughts and feelings:
Usually I would just take pictures of us at our field trips with my phone, blogging about some of them.  Other than that they never got written down.  Everything was from my point of view. It was eye opening to see the things the kids noticed and wanted in the journal. I am really enjoying having somewhere specific that is meant for this type of journaling, otherwise it wouldn’t get done.



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To see what others think of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.