New subscribers to the Trail Guide, the Trailmix.Net quarterly newsletter, have access to our e-book: Educational Expeditions. The book is a collection of ideas that Trailmix.Net is being built upon. One of the ideas in the e-book, and an idea that I would like to break down further here, is the concept of converting a day hike or other outdoor activity into an imaginative wilderness expedition. In this blog post, we will look at the simple idea of the Educational Expedition and its implications.
Outdoor Activities for Kids: The Educational Expedition
The idea of building an Educational Expedition originally began with an article that was written at SFgate.com by Peter Fimrite. I wrote on the Trailmix.Net blog about a very interesting statement made about schoolwork and the pursuit of an education. Specifically, one of the families interviewed by Fimrite identified the pursuit of an education as the biggest obstacle to taking the time (three hour drive from the SF Bay area) to visit Yosemite National Park.
National Parks and Education
To me, the irony of this statement was that the park is an abundant source of learning opportunity for children. In fact, I truly believe that it is impossible to visit Yosemite without learning something about geology, the Miwok (Native Americans who originally lived in Yosemite), the history of conservation, the origination of the National Parks System, wildlife biology, and any number of other topics. It was in this post that the fundamental concept of the Educational Expedition began.
An expedition is a journey or voyage made for some specific exploratory purpose. Watch any program on one of the Learning or Discovery channels and you will see the same story unfold over and over. It is a simple formula: there is an identified vision for a research, adventure, or a learning topic, some sort of antagonist, challenge, or unknown that needs to be solved, and the attainment of specific goals in order to achieve the vision.
It occurred to us on a subsequent visit to Yosemite that with a little planning (you can find a template in the e-book), it is easy to convert a day hike or visit to an outdoor place like this into a family expedition of your own that rivals those broadcast by the cable channels.
Less Television, More Outdoor Recreation
That's the basic idea, here are the implications. First, with a little planning your family can build expeditions that are better than any you see on television. Obviously, they are better because you and your family get to experience them first hand. It's like traveling vs. watching the travel channel. It isn't hard to do and requires a little bit of vision and goal setting. Once you know what you want to do and set the goals to get there, you are on your way.
Outdoor Based Learning and Education
Second, and this gets back to the original article that spawned the idea, the educational value of building your own expedition is enormous. Think of it as high yield learning. Rather than the structured question and answer that is provided in formal education system, an educational expedition is by definition loosely structured and requires broad use of problem solving skills to answer a real world (and if you build it right, engaging) question.