Homeschooling Tips: Virtual Field Trips Part 2

See Part 1 Homeschooling Tips here

On our virtual field trip the children went back to watch the webcam over and over. I dare say that the cam got more attention than TV, video games, and even friends those days. It took three days of watching for us to finally catch a glimps of the green sea turtle that calls the National Aquarium home.

This discovery of course sparked more art, specially from our 5 year old and many more questions and research. This sea turtle is an endangered species who was found on a beach the size of a dinner plate. She had an infection in her flipper and it had to be amputated to save her life. Sadly this meant she could not go back to the wild. She has thrived at the National Aquarium though and is now a beautiful 500 lb animal that is loved by many. She has favorite places around the tank and sadly one of them is not currently where this webcam is though so you might have to really hunt to catch a glimpse of her!

TIP: Virtual Field Trips can make great lapbooks filled with the questions, facts, and art the kids create. It helps with recording their work for the year!

The Live Cam:

Live streaming video by Ustream

The kids where so excited about the webcam that they would bring friends in the house to see the screen and tell them all about it! TIP: Learning is most fun when shared! Give your children the opportunity to show off what they have learned to friends and family!

We knew from our research that the big fish in this image was a grouper fish but not sure just what kind. He was just such a cool fish to watch, hard to get a good screen shot of though.

There are over 65 species in this tank and it became a mission to try and find as many as possible. Sadly there is not a list of them all that we could find so we had to try and make our own list!

While we did the research to identify many of them species in the tank, I purposefully didn’t help the children research some of the their questions because in our case, we would be going to the aquarium and could find out there! TIP: In science, the questions are just as important as the answers so help your student see the importance of their questions!

This is a fish my 5 year old has nicknamed Kissy Face. He looks to be grey but is always too close to the screen to identify beyond it being the same fish over and over. He loves the webcam and kisses it all the time. He gets in the way but makes our daughter laugh so much when ever he shows up, and it is often. We think we will have to get to the aquarium to actually see what kind of fish he is! Wish us luck!

There are so many live webcams online and there are even sites dedicated to virtual field trips. If you can’t get out or want to prepare for a field trip consider going on a virtual field trip. They can be so much fun and free too!

Check back learn about how our trip went!