Homeschooling: How I Planned National Park Visits for Homeschooling U.S. History

One of the delights of our family vacation this July was the ability to stop at four National Parks! As I was planned the upcoming school year's curriculum in May, I decided to align the boys' social studies curriculum so that my 5th grader was doing U.S. history along with my 11th grader. They will be learning United States History from the Civil War to the present for this homeschool year, and I knew there had to be great places to visit for the Civil War and the Old West on our road trip from Texas to Michigan!

How I planned our National Park stops for teaching U.S. History:  

While researching Civil War battlefields and other related historical sites, one of my first internet stops was to www.nps.org, home of the National Park Service. All the national parks are listed here, with each park having a designated webpage full of information to plan your visit and learning opportunities.

The Visitor Center is your first stop to talk to a Park Ranger,
get a Junior Ranger guide and any other info for the visit.

Planning the trip:  

I took advantage of all the amenities on each park's website to help with my planning. Here is what you can find at a park's website: 

1. Free lesson plans are available for many of the parks with teaching points to use during a tour and activities to use afterward. Print them to take along for reference.  I used a 1-inch binder to keep everything together that was related to our park visits.

2. Specific park directions are helpful to have in advance since some park addresses are not recognizable by GPS. 

3. Operating hours, tour times, ticket costs and other park-specific details are important to reference. Look for suggestions for the best visiting times of the day or if there are limited daily tour tickets available (as in the case of The Lincoln Home, Springfield, IL). At the top of the webpage is an icon for Alerts, which provides information about closed areas, construction, or weather-related alerts. 

4. Schedule enough time to make the visit worthwhile. The website offers tips for how much time to plan for touring the site. Make sure you add in some downtime too! The kids may want to roam and explore without being on constant tour mode. See if the park has a place for a picnic, if you can leave and come back on the same admission,  or if they offer other "off the trail" exploring sites and activities.

5. Check for other local activities scheduled during your visit.  You may want to change the day of your visit if there is a large festival or park event where parking and large crowds are what you want to avoid. Large local events outside the park may affect finding a hotel room if you want to stay in the vicinity overnight. 

When arriving at the park: 

Filling out his Junior Ranger Booklet at
Fort Smith, Arkansas

1.  Check-in with a Park Ranger. The Park Rangers at our stops were so helpful and knowledgeable, especially when I explained that we were homeschooling! They made a point of sharing what areas would be most helpful for students. Park Rangers can often give information about other nearby historical sites that coincide with their park. 

2.  Ask for a Junior Ranger Booklet for your child.  They are free and available at most every national park. The booklet has several activities geared toward that specific park and will keep your child engaged as you tour. When they finish a set number of activities, they get a signed certificate, take a Junior Park Ranger pledge, and receive a site-specific Junior Park Ranger pin. (Geared to kids 10 years and younger.) My youngest loved collecting his badges!

3.  Take free handouts and brochures.  Even though  I could print some information sheets online, we made sure to get the park brochure and other available handouts in the tourist center to add to our travel binder for future reference. 

4.  Snap plenty of photos!  Not only did we take "tourist" shots, but we also made a point of photographing specific sites, buildings, artifacts and even some signage that would help us remember details later. In this digital age of photography, it makes it incredibly easy to use photos for lessons right on your computer without having to print them.  Allow your child to take photos too!  It's the perfect activity if you are having them complete a notebooking unit. 

5.  Visit the gift shop or bookstore. Some parks have large gift/book store areas.  Depending on your budget, you may want to plan a stipend to use toward purchasing some site-specific books or videos that will be useful when you get home. (One park we visited had paperback books by Dover Publications that were only $2-3 apiece!)  Our best purchase was a National Park Passport for $8.95 at our first park visit. Our youngest got it stamped at each park during our trip and can keep it for visits at other parks through our homeschooling years!

After the visit:

1. Journal the adventures.  Again, you can do this by taking photos during the visits to record what your family experienced.  On the road, I encouraged my youngest to spend a few minutes each day to record just a few sentences about what he enjoyed most that day.

2. Organize material right away.  This was the reason that I made a binder.  I hole-punched all the information sheets we printed online and what we received at park locations and had them organized by site.  As we study our history and come across a reference to where we visited, we can take time to look at our material, Junior Ranger booklets, photos, and other books to help us remember and to reinforce what is learned. 

It was worth the effort to plan ahead so that we were able to plan a trip that was memorable!  Hope this information is helpful to you as you plan your homeschooling year!