A successful field trip takes careful planning and a lot of liaising. To prevent chaos during the trip, it is better to anticipate what can possibly happened and act on it before worse thing occurs.

Here are the steps to do when planning for your field trip:

1. Define the objectives of your field trip. Field trip is done to allow children to break away from their normal class routine. It also provides children some hands on learning experiences. It is good if your objective is related to your current theme so that the children can apply and connect the knowledge and skills they learned from the classroom in the real world context.

2. Find a place that meets your objective. Search for places where you can have your field trip, and at the same time, a place that will meet your objective. If you have many choices, narrow it down until you find one that is best suited for the attainment of your objective.

3. Contact the place of interest. Call or email the place you have chosen. Inform them that you will have your field trip in their place. Let them know your objective. They might have additional workshops or programmes they can offer to you to strengthen children’s knowledge on the current topic you have. Also, ask them the starting time they can accommodate you and for how long.

4. Plan your itinerary. After knowing the start time and end time of your field trip, calculate how long will it take from going to the place to your school and back. It is also good if you will reconnoiter the place so that you will know if the bus stop is near the place you will visit or you still have to walk a long way to reach your destination. In addition to toilet time, travel time and field trip time, you also have to consider if the children need to have snacks or lunch at the venue. You need to have time for this and have to include it in your schedule.

5. Arrange for transport. Since you know already where you are going and what time is the start of your trip, call a bus company and ask whether they have available bus and how much it costs.

6. Calculate the field trip fee. How much is the bus fare? How much is the admission fee in the place you will visit? How much will the lunch or snack cost? Calculate the total amount and this will be the field trip fee.

7. Send an email to the parents about your upcoming field trip. Let them know the objective of your field trip and other details such as where and when is the field trip and how much does it cost. Let the parents know what their children will wear on the day of the trip. Do the children need to wear jacket? Do they need to wear a hat?

If the parents want their child to join the trip, state in your email that they can sign the consent form and pay for the field trip fee.

8. Collect all the consent forms and identify who are the children attending and not attending. Identify how many adults should accompany the children to the trip. If there are children not attending the trip, identify who should supervise them in case they come to school.

That’s all folks! Look out for my next post, which will be about “What should you do during your field trip?”