Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/group-trips-an-invitation-to-cooperative-learning/5012495/
"Education is experience; the rest is only information."- Albert Einstein
When group trips are well planned within the child care or school curriculum, they can lead to the finest early childhood education: the children's active learning, their deep involvement, their shared trip experience coupled with child initiated use of that experience back in the classroom together. To really know a thing, one must see, hear, feel, and use it. Einstein put it well: this is true education. Secondhand learning, such as lectures, reading, television, and the Internet, is relatively abstract information, not sound education, not knowing with one's mind, muscle, and heart.
A Sample Trip
My five year olds in New York City were building parts of their community with unit blocks. They wondered about fire protection, so I took them on a walking trip to the local fire station. I went there first, of course, and talked with the chief about our coming. I mentioned the children's interests, their need to ask endless questions, climb aboard a fire engine, feel the hoses, and see where the men sleep to be ready in a moment's notice. "I'll second Tom to you," the chief said. "He loves kids and likes to explain things."
Next morning, my ...