How To Turn Everyday Errands Into Educational Outings
Recently, my wife and I were scrolling through our social media accounts when she came across a homeschooling mom who was looking for a way to record getting a haircut as an educational experience on their homeschool tracking. The comments on that post were pretty divided on the topic. Some parents were aghast that anyone would record something as mundane as a haircut as being educational, while others were doing their best to make it seem like visiting the barber was the pinnacle of education. But I think both sets of commenters missed the mark.
Everyday outings, like haircuts, are such common events in life that it can seem like there isn’t anything for our children to learn from them. However, the truth of the matter is a bit more nuanced. Kids have an incredible ability to learn from their surroundings and experiences, and with a bit of intentionality, even the most mundane of tasks can become an opportunity to teach them something new!
Getting a Haircut
For most people trying to add educational activities to their to-do list, a haircut might not seem like a logical first choice. But if you take a moment to consider, there are actually a few different discussion points worth exploring.
Small Business Savvy
Many barber shops and hair salons are small businesses and can be great places to talk about what starting a business looks like. This is an opportunity to discuss concepts like operating costs, inventory tracking, and customer satisfaction. If your kid has aspirations of operating their own business, these are key concepts to understand.
Even if you’re visiting a larger chain, there’s a pretty good chance that the specific shop you visit is a franchise for the larger brand, which is worth discussing.
Environmental Impacts
Have you ever wondered what barber shops do with all of the hair that gets left behind?
As it turns out, human hair does a spectacular job of soaking up oil! Many barbershops participate in programs that send hair clippings to be made into hair mats used in oil spill cleanup operations worldwide. Have your kid do some research into recent oil spills and ask if your barbershop participates in any cleanup programs. If not, this could also be a great opportunity to work on a persuasive essay!
Mathematics and Data Science
Ever wonder how fast your hair is growing? Maybe a trip to the barber can be a great time to start figuring it out!
Have your child measure the length of their hair before and after their haircut and record the results in a science notebook or spreadsheet. Be sure to record the date as well! Start recording hair length on regular (daily, weekly, monthly) basis to get more data. As you get more data it’s possible to figure out how quickly hair grows over time, and if you continue tracking it, you can even begin exploring other questions.
Are there times of year when hair grows faster, or is growth consistent year round? Does the rate of growth change depending on total hair length?
Data science is a huge business in modern life, and this is a (very) basic way to introduce it as a concept!
Going Grocery Shopping
Weekly grocery shopping trips are another regular task filled with educational potential. Buying food is something that literally everyone has to do to survive, so understanding how to do it well is worth learning in and of itself. But with a bit more intentionality, you can teach your kids everything from critical thinking and planning skills to cross-cultural appreciation!
Meal Planning
This is probably the most obvious way of making grocery shopping educational, but it’s definitely a good one!
Having your kids help you make the meal plan for the week can help them with practical concepts like using a calendar and can help them to appreciate the work you put into taking care of them. Helping them to pick healthy meals can teach them about nutrition, and building a shopping list teaches them about reading recipes and forward planning.
Older kids might be capable of taking over meal prep, as well!
Budgeting
Have your child come up with a menu on a set budget, or challenge them to recreate a restaurant favorite for less than what it would cost to eat out. Helping them to think about what essentials, like food, cost can help them get ready for supporting themselves later in life, and adding up ingredient costs is great math practice.
Explore where your food comes from
The food we find in our local grocery store comes from all over the world. This gives us a couple of excellent topics to explore!
If you want to work on geography, try finding the places your food comes from on a map and see how far it had to travel to get to you. You could take it a step further by learning things about the cultures of those places, or choosing to cook a typical meal from that country.
Older kids could also be asked to consider the environmental impacts of buying food from far off locations instead of local produce. This is also a great time to learn what sorts of foods are grown on farms local to you, and perhaps even plan a meal with locally-sourced ingredients
Doctor Check-ups
No, doctor’s visits don’t exactly qualify as an everyday task for most people, but they are great for providing some experiential education.
Basic Anatomy
Unsurprisingly, doctor’s visits are good times to help kids learn a bit more about the human body and how it works. Have your kid make observations about what the doctor does during the visit, and have them think about why.
Why does the doctor press their stethoscope to your chest? Are they listening for heartbeats? Breathing? Digestion? Have your kid ask! Most doctors that we’ve visited have been happy to explain what they’re doing to our kids as soon as they show any interest at all.
Hygiene
Yes, your kids probably already know to cover their coughs and that they need to wash their hands, but doctor’s offices are good places to talk about why. Take this opportunity to chat with them about what germs are and how they move from person to person.
If your doctor’s office is anything like ours, there will likely be signs around to help if you need it.
Visiting your Local Park
Parks and playgrounds are incredible places for learning about science. What specific scientific learning you choose to do will depend greatly on what’s available at your specific park, but no matter which park you visit, there’s almost certainly some science to learn!
Playground Physics
Physics, at its most basic, is the study of the different forces at work in our world. Playgrounds are all about playing with those forces in a fun way!
Younger kids can learn about gravity as it pulls them down the slide, see how forces transfer while getting pushed on the swings, and feel centrifugal forces as they spin on a merry-go-round. As kids get older, you can start teaching about how friction slows them down, or talk about how inertia keeps them going.
Maybe you could have them experiment with wearing different clothing to go down the slide so they can see how certain materials have lower friction than others. To show this, you could time them going down the slide and help them calculate their speed. (A rope and a measuring tape are useful for measuring the slide’s distance, especially if it curves.)
See what experiments you can come up with!
Natural Sciences
Parks can also be great places for exploring local biodiversity.
I particularly love parks that feature forest hiking trails, as these are the perfect places for discovering local animal or plant life. Depending on your location, you might even be able to forage up some ingredients for your next meal!
With my kids, we most often end up working on spotting and identifying animals, but parks can be great places for learning about plants, mushrooms, the weather, or pretty much anything else that you can find in the area. You don’t have to make it structured for it to be a great educational opportunity. Just go with whatever you find!
Going for Ice cream
If you’ve spent much time homeschooling at all, you know that there are moments when you just need a win for your week. I get it. Sometimes the kids are less than fascinated with the lesson you had planned even though you thought it’d be awesome.
If you do it right, getting ice cream with your kids might just be the exact educational outing that you’re looking for. That’s the taste of success!
Compare and Contrast
Learning how to compare and contrast is a key component for making smart decisions, and an absolutely essential critical thinking skill. What better way to learn it than with ice cream?
The simplest way to do this is by comparing different flavors at your favorite shop, but if you want to make your outing bigger, you can totally try out similar flavors at different shops across town. Try charting out different aspects of the ice cream, like hardness, texture, sweetness, price, and overall likability.
Cross Cultural Learning
Did you know that ice cream could be used to learn about other cultures?
Different parts of the world prefer different styles of frozen treat, whether it’s the Mexican paletas (frozen fruit juice pops), Hawaiian shaved ice, or Italian gelato. Help your kids to do some research on each different location and what kinds of flavors are common in each place, and then try the different treats for yourselves!
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With a little forethought and intentionality, almost any trip out of the house can be made into a field trip, whether it’s across the world or just down to the corner market. It doesn’t have to be a big thing, and it doesn’t have to be difficult. And, you don’t even have to be a homeschooling family to take advantage of this. Family field trips can be great learning experiences for your kids whether you homeschool, attend a public school, or use online charter schools (like this one in Pennsylvania) to get the best of both worlds!
To be sure, I’m not suggesting that every small trip needs to be made educational. But if you’ve had a busy week and want to make sure that your kids have the chance to learn something, please let this reassure you that it is definitely possible to add in some education no matter what your to-do list looks like!
