A. What are your objectives? (What I hope my child will learn from this trip.)
Plant life cycles: seeds, germination, growth. How to appreciate fruit and how the fruit began as a seed. How the cycle repeats itself.
B. What spiritual values can be taught? (Ask the Lord to help you find spiritual values.)
1. God designed His creation to be responsive to His Word and His plan. We depend on God’s care and His provision for us: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:17).
2. How we know the type of tree by its fruit: Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? (Matthew 7:16).
3. Abiding in Christ, being grafted into God's family tree: And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again (Romans 11:23).
4. Sowing and reaping: But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully (2 Corinthians 9:6).
C. Questions to create an interest: (Things to find out on the trip.)
1. How do plants or trees begin?
2. Which seasons help plants to begin life?
3. What do plants need to grow?
4. How many different types of apples are there?
5. How many apples can you get from one tree?
D. Activities or projects to do before the trip:
1. Cut open several fruits (apple, orange, avocado) and
compare seeds.
2. Look up vocabulary words: germination, seedling, sprout,
root, embryo, endosperm.
3. Read parables about plants from the Bible.
4. Read and discuss Mark 4:3–8
Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundredfold.
5. Look up apples in the encyclopedia.
6. Get a book about Johnny Appleseed from the library.
Read and discuss.
7. Draw a seed and label its parts.
E. Activities for after the field trip:
1. Make a poster showing what you have learned.
2. Fold a paper into fourths. Draw the life cycle of an apple tree.
3. Bring home apples and share what you have learned with others.
4. Draw a picture of a man sowing and a picture of a man reaping.
5. Memorize 2 Corinthians 9:6.
B. What spiritual values can be taught? (Ask the Lord to help you find spiritual values.)