Virginia State Parks- School in the Woods Plan

This year our homeschool will revolve around Virginia State Parks.  There is an abundance of history and nature to learn about in Virginia, and an amazing park system that gives us access to much of it. We'll throw in a national park here and there as well.  At first I thought we could do it in one summer, but after digging in, I'm expecting this to take a year or two.

http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/find-a-park.shtml


We will participate in trailquest (http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/trail-quest.shtml) and  the geocaching game (http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/geocaching-game.shtml) along the way.

I've been in contact with Nancy Heltman who has shared some great information to make our journey rich and productive.

We have lesson plans designed on a number of park related activities. They can be found here:

http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/backyard-classrooms.shtml

We are adding more.

Some of our parks have year round staff that can coordinate programs or plug you into ones they are already running. We have the best staff coverage during the summer. Some parks only hire programming staff from May through September though. We have full time staff at the following parks that are dedicated to managing our programs:

Sky Meadows

Lake Anna

Hungry Mother

Douthat

James River

Twin Lakes

Natural Tunnel

Wilderness Road

Because of the nature of the parks, these parks also have programming available year round:

Southwest Virginia Museum (open March through December)

Caledon

Sailor’s Creek

Chippokes Plantation

Usually you can just call the park and they will put you in touch with the staff that can help you. Each park’s phone number is listed on top of the park’s web page:http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state-parks/find-a-park.shtml. At this time, Natural Bridge is not managed by State Parks and while we have a great relationship with Breaks Interstate Park, they are not a Virginia State Park either.

Nearly all of our parks also have backpacks you can check out with field guides, binoculars and magnifiers so that you can explore the park on your own. Many actually have designed some self-guided activities so be sure to ask about those. If you run into a roadblock and need some assistance with a park, let me know. I can get our statewide program managers to make some suggestions for individual parks if they don’t have staff available.

When you visit the park for a day on an official home school outing, you do not have to pay the parking fee. This is our policy:

Parking fees are waived for any vehicle occupied solely by students and/or teachers and/or assisting personnel participating in an official activity of a bona fide school, home school, or institution of higher learning. Parks may require that individuals in vehicles other than those marked as a school bus verify their official activity by letter from the school or approved field trip form, or in the case of home school groups, proof of home school status such as current ID card from a state or national home school organization (HEAV, HSLDA, etc.) or a copy of the letter from the school district that acknowledges "Notice of Intent" to home school for that school year.

I must warn you that you may run into seasonal staff at the contact station unaware of this policy so be prepared to ask that they verify with their supervisor. Feel free to use my name and mention it’s #4 in the parking fee notes.

Depending on the program, there may be fees involved. Usually this applies for a guided canoe or kayak trip or anything that involve materials (like building a bird house). Ask about that when you contact the park. If we have to arrange a special program for you, we might have a charge as well.

We currently don’t have discounts available for overnight visits but we are getting ready to implement a points type program for frequent users.

Nancy Heltman
Virginia State Parks
Visitor Services Director
Nancy.Heltman@dcr.virginia.gov
(804)786-5057

I hope you'll enjoy reading about our journey as much as I know I am going to enjoy sharing it with you!