I have a wide span of ages in my house. Two are a whole lot older than my youngest who's 3 years old. When planning field trips it's hard to come up with ideas that both the older and younger get something out of. I tend to go with what the older kids can enjoy and the littlest one just has fun anyway.
My friend started Fieldtrip Fridays, so I started trying to think outside the box for easy fieldtrip ideas that wouldn't require a lot of time or energy. But would be equally enriching to both.
I saw this idea online somewhere for preschoolers and decided to try and adapt it for the older kids. Basically, take a shape/color walk around your neighborhood letting your preschooler/kindergartener point out what they see. If they are able, sketch their findings.
My idea for the older kids centered around sketching what you see realistically. Since all drawings start with basic shapes, I thought this was a great adaptation. I told them if they saw something they wanted to draw, we'd stop so they could sketch it. I should have prepped them for that better. I had to walk one child back home because they were pouty about this activity of drawing shapes.
After that detour, the other two had a great time finding shapes everywhere and in some really uncommon places. Shapes we walk over everyday or never stop to notice.
Octagons
Triangles, rectangles, ovals, circles...
My favorite pictures were the shapes within shapes.
When our walk was over, I had the older two pick one thing they saw and try to draw it realistically. This is the first time we've done this type of drawing, but I'll definitely try this again in the near future.
For more field trips, check out Field Trip Fridays at It's A Boy's Life!
