Top 3 Tips to Survive A Field Trip

Last Friday I took my first field trip with just my class! Thanks to many of my followers, our class pet Sonic the Hedgehog won a gift card to a local attraction and we used it to take an end of the year trip. These 3 things helped me survive and save my sanity :)

We were going to a big place where a kid could easily run off in any direction. This scared the bajeezus (how do you even spell that?) out of me. So, I planned accordingly by making my kids shirts. Now, most of my kiddos don't have a school shirt, so I purposely sized up to last them through the years. They loved them, and I loved that I could easily spot them with their purple tees. If your kids have the same school shirt, that would work well, but you could also just request that all kids wear a specific solid color shirt. You could even tie-dye!

 Our trip consisted of arcade games, ticket redemption, playing in a giant indoor jungle gym equipped with foam balls you can throw and shoot out of canons, and a pizza lunch. I was concerned about letting the kids go back to playing in the jungle gym after lunch, even if time allowed. So, I brought some printables with me along with highlighters, pencils, and crayons zip pouches. 

I made a word search using this website that included their names and attractions at our location. After lunch, I handed out highlighters and they chose to do the word search and tic-tac-toe for 10 minutes while we waited on our bus. It kept them busy, and my anxiety under control as they weren't running around.

We did the reflection when we got back to school. It was the perfect way to end our day and allow them to share about their trip with me. 

I was so excited to have parents willing to help out on our trip. This made it so much easier on me when I put all the kids into groups. I wanted our parents to have all the needed information, but didn't want them to have to carry around a piece of paper. So I made mini information pages that fit into name tag clips I had access to use from my school office. 

I included our approximate timeline so they knew what our activities were and when they were happening, a list of all of the groups so they could easily see who was with who, and our expectations and consequences (which I didn't have to give, THANK GOODNESS). My kids and I reviewed these (1-3 PBIS) all week long so they knew they were not going to act crazy!

I also included my cell number (AHHH!) just in case anyone got separated. Not used at all. Let's hope I don't have siblings next year and parents saved that number... ;)

Parents were great about clipping the tags to their shirts somewhere, so I could also keep track of them...totally unintentional, but super helpful.

If you found these tips helpful, I also put together a product that includes the editable version of my activity page, reflection page (primary lines with dashes, primary lines without dashes, and smaller lines idea for upper elementary), and editable chaperone name tag clips. This product is on sale 50% off for 48 hours since posting this blog post.

If you'd like to save these tips, just hover the image and save to Pinterest!