BristolUK

There's an article in the paper today on school trips. I remember a fair number from Bristol...various Roman things (Bath Baths, ruins etc), London Museums, Bristol museum, forts, castles, varsity football/rugby matches at Wembley/Twickenham, Zoo.

I was only on the scene for a short period of the stepkids' education and most of that was here, where there wouldn't be much for a school to organise a trip to. Educationally, I mean, not touristy. No doubt there are sites of various events but they likely don't look different to anywhere else, not in the sense of having ruins, ramparts, stones, hill carvings etc

But I asked my stepdaughter what school trips they did previously. Apparently the stayed on a reservation, some kind of camp. That's it.

They lived on Montreal's south shore, half an hour from the centre of the city. No school trips to Science centre, no museums, no Biosphere, nothing architectural, no port, no zoo or aquarium.

Anyone have any experiences of Canadian school trips to offer?

Atlantic Xpat

My kids in Elementary school do all manner of day trips - Botanical gardens, Fluvarium, GeoCentre, Nature Park, local Farm etc. No overnights but they are too young for that. Not sure what happens in Junior High/High.

Its the extracurricular activites that seem to have the big trips. Eldest daughter and wife are going to New York for 5 days next month to dance on Broadway, Costing a bloody fortune but a drop in the ocean compared to if they were into Hockey some other such "hit or kick an object into some sort of net" activity that seems inordinately popular here.

BristolUK

Good to hear.
The article I saw was about costs.

Perhaps I should extend this to anyone with no examples.

Vulcanoid

With no experience of my own, the only school trips my partner's ever mentioned were outdoors-y ones (seeing as, starting in interior BC it would be a very long trip to any zoos, aquariums, etc). It was apparently on one of these that he took a running jump, and promptly learned how glacier-fed lakes were different from the rain & river-fed lakes he was used to

Oakvillian

Lots of local day trips here - Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto, First Nations (Iroquois) cultural exhibits at Crawford Lake, pioneer villages, etc etc. Grade 7 does a winter trip (so far as I can tell, a glorified 3-day mini-break skiing holiday) to St Donat, QC, and Grade 8 does a four-day, three-night trip to camp in early summer shortly before graduation, where they do a bunch of hiking, canoeing, and various other Canadiana.

But yes, the more $$$ trips are all connected to extracurriculars. Choir, hockey, soccer, all have away trips and tournaments that require travel/accommodation/meal costs, some also require parent accompaniment. We've been to London (Ontario), Buffalo, Montreal in the last year. Offpsring #1 is possibly heading to New Zealand in about 18 months time - better start saving up for that one right now!

caretaker

We used to have school trips to the Coop Dairy and the Burns meat packing plant in Prince Albert, and our school picnics were sometimes at the battlefield at Batoche 40 miles from our town or Jumping Lake. After moving to Regina we went to Batoche once, and once to the Condie Moraine north of town.

scrubbedexpat091

Field trips were the only thing that made school tolerable....

BristolUK

Where did you go?

We had the school fields

scrubbedexpat091

Lots of different places.

San Diego Zoo
Balboa Park to museums
Aquarium
Mission San Diego (First of California's Missions)
Tide Pools
Naval base/tours of navy ships
San Diego Wild Animal Park
Disneyland
Sea World (back before it was a theme park with rides, back then it was aquariums, dolphins and whales and shows.)
Beach

I am sure I have forgotten some, but those were a few of the places we went between 1st and 6th grade, once in 7th and above no more field trips.

6th grade also had 6th grade camp where we went to a camp in the mountains for a week, learned about the mountain areas, canoed, things like that.

Probably averaged 4 or so field trips a year.


My sisters kids seem to never go on field trips, but flip side they get more frequent breaks vs back in the day when it was just summer break, 2 weeks at Christmas and 1 week at Easter.


I probably learned more on some of the field trip then I did in school where sitting still was a chore and not something I did well, nor was being able to focus, wandering mind does not lead to learning well. Field trips were a nice distraction and allowed kids like me to do some hands on learning and move about.

scilly

There's been a drastic reduction in school trips in the 25+ years since my daughter was in school here and the present-day, especially in the public system.

Funding cutbacks meant that the schools have not been able to cover the cost of field trips for most of that time, and the only other option is for the parents to cover the cost of even local field trips.

I can remember when we used to have 5 or 6 different schools a day having a field trip to the Botanic Garden, now they think they are working hard when have 2 or 4 a week. The only cost would have been the bus fare or the cost of renting a school bus during the day time.