Field Trip Tips. They Help With the Bus Ride.

If you are getting ready for a field trip, you might like to read this post. It tells how we make that sometimes LONG bus ride a little more bearable for students and teachers. 

This is a repeat from last year, so it might look familiar to you. 

We are going to Lake Michigan. This is about an hour and a half drive. There is a State Park there with a nice big sand dune to climb. 

The kids do not swim, but we do a lot of other things.  First of all, getting to see one of the Great Lakes is something many of our students have never done. And Secondly seeing a land form such as a sand dune is something they also haven't seen.

We will climb the hill and roll down in the sand. We'll take walks and explore or do scavenger hunts. We also fly kites and explore wind energy. The best part is exploring architecture! (This is our way of saying we play in the sand.) The kids try to build castles and other structures to see how stable they are. Does the wind knock them down, did a wave sabotage it?  How tall can you get it? Can you make a drip castle? {I'm justifying how play really does work into important skills for life!} How deep can you dig? Can you bury your friend except for their head?

To make the bus ride seem not so bad, we prepare a clipboard for each seat on the bus. Two kids will share this clipboard.

 Each clipboard has two Tic Tac Toe and 

Dot to Dot games on it.

They also have a word search puzzle and 

two blank pages to draw on.

I grab some spares just in case!

This crate of books will be slid back and forth down the aisle so they can read books if they choose to.

All of these things help to pass the time on the bus ride. What do you do on your bus rides?