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How Do I Plan a Homeschool Field Trip?

A field trip is one activity with a date, a place, a headcount and a price. This guide covers building it in Famlo, filling it, and running it on the day. It is for owners, co-leaders and event managers — the three roles that can open Activities.

Quick Answer​

Open the account menu, choose Manage organizations, select your organization, and open Activities. Start a new activity, set the date, time and venue, choose who can see it, and price it in the Tickets & Pricing section, where Capacity on each ticket is what caps your headcount. Save, then send an announcement so families know it is up.

Before you begin​

The venue decides most of your settings, so call them first.

Venue research:

  • Ask about homeschool group rates and minimum and maximum group sizes
  • Ask about required adult-to-child ratios
  • Confirm the date, the time and how long you have
  • Ask what educational materials or guided options come with it

Logistics:

  • Decide on transport — carpool, meet there, or a coach
  • Plan meals, breaks and bathrooms
  • Have a wet-weather answer for anything outdoors
  • Find the parking and write down where to meet

Budget:

  • Admission per person, and whether the group rate is per head or per booking
  • Extras such as parking, materials or lunch
  • Whether your organization subsidises any of it

Bring those three answers to the form and the rest takes ten minutes.

Step 1: Start the activity​

  1. Open the account menu and choose Manage organizations.
  2. Select your organization.
  3. Open Activities in the console.
  4. Start a new activity.

The form is one page of sections. Everything below is a decision on it.

Step 2: Fill in the basics​

Give it a name, a description, the start and finish times, and the venue address.

Names that work say what and where: "Zoo Field Trip — Behind the Scenes Tour", "Pioneer Village Living History Day".

Set the start time fifteen to thirty minutes before the venue expects you. That is your parking, walking and finding-each-other buffer, and it is the single most useful thing you can do for a family arriving with four children.

Write the description for a family who has never met you. What happens, what a child should bring, and what a first-timer should expect are the three things people write to ask about. Cover them and you save yourself the messages:

  • The plan for the visit, and what children will see and do
  • What to bring — water, packed lunch, notebook
  • What to wear — closed-toe shoes, weather-appropriate layers
  • The meeting point, in words a stranger can follow
  • Whether a parent must stay with their children, and from what age

Field trip is one of seven activity types — Class, Field trip, Meetup, Workshop, Drop-in, Co-op and Camp. Choosing it is what puts you in front of families filtering for field trips.

Step 3: Choose who can see it​

Visibility is a required choice and the one most often set wrong.

ChoiceWho can find it
PublicAnyone. It appears in search, on the map, and on your organization's page.
Members onlyYour members. A non-member never sees that it exists.
UnlistedOnly people you send the link to. It is never listed anywhere, including on your own page.

Most field trips want Public — venues are usually happy to fill a group, and it is how you reach families who have not found you yet.

Step 4: Set categories and ages​

Every activity needs at least one category and can carry up to five. They come from a fixed list, so pick the ones a family would search for: nature and outdoors, science, history, arts.

Set the age range the trip is really for. Families filter by age band — Preschool, Elementary, Middle and High.

The range is advice, not a gate. Famlo never blocks a registration because of a child's age; a family registering outside your range is asked to confirm and the booking goes through. If the venue enforces a hard age limit, say so in the description and expect to have the conversation yourself.

Step 5: Price it and cap the headcount​

Pricing and capacity both live in the Tickets & Pricing section of the same form.

For a free trip, leave admission on Free. Families register without paying.

For a paid trip, choose Paid and build your ticket rows. Each carries:

FieldWhat it does
Ticket NameWhat the family picks — "Adult", "Child 5-12", "Under 5"
Price ($)The amount charged. $0 makes that ticket free.
CapacityHow many of this ticket exist. Blank means unlimited.
ScopePer person, Per family or Per group
DescriptionWhat is included, shown under the ticket name

Scope is what one ticket buys, not a way of counting the room:

  • Per person — one seat. Two children means two tickets.
  • Per family — the whole household on one ticket. Use it when the venue charges per family.
  • Per group — one ticket covering a party, for a venue that charges by the booking.

Capacity on the ticket rows is your headcount cap. Add the venue's maximum across your tickets and the activity stops selling when it is reached. Below the tickets, Add-ons & Extras covers optional items — a parking pass, a boxed lunch, a guidebook. An add-on is simply an item a family can add; it has no scope.

See Tickets and pricing for the full editor and what to charge against the fee.

Step 6: Require your terms​

You can require a family to accept your own words before they register — a liability waiver, a photo release, supervision expectations, behaviour rules.

It is a block of text you write and a Required checkbox. Ticked, a family cannot complete registration without accepting. Unticked, the text is shown for information.

There are no templates and no fill-in variables. Write it once and paste it into the next trip that needs it.

:::note There are no per-activity questions You cannot add a custom question to a field trip's registration form. The only questions Famlo asks applicants are your organization's screening questions — a maximum of three, free text, answered once when someone requests to join. If you need to know who is driving or who has a mobility need, ask in the activity's message thread after people register. :::

Step 7: Decide about scholarship money​

Whether an award can pay for this trip is set here, for the whole activity. Turning scholarship payments on makes every ticket on it payable from an award.

Awards are granted in advance by your organization, not requested at checkout. There is nothing for a family to apply for on the registration form, and no scholarship option for them to choose. If a family holds an award from you and this activity accepts scholarship money, the award comes off automatically when they complete the booking. See Scholarships.

Save the form when you are done. The activity is live and families can register.

Running the trip​

Watch the registrations​

The activity's console page carries the roster. Your activity list shows registrations against capacity, so you can see how full the trip is at a glance.

There is no attendee export, no way to add someone to the roster by hand, and no walk-in registration. The roster on screen is the list. A family who paid you in cash still has to register themselves.

When it fills up​

A full activity closes rather than queuing anyone. The button families see changes to Join the waitlist, and the page reads "This event is full — be the first on the waitlist." until somebody joins, then counts them: "N are waiting for a spot."

:::warning Nobody holds a place on that waitlist Famlo uses the word waitlist because that is the word families use. It is not a queue. Nobody holds a position, nobody is next in line, and nobody is promoted into a spot. When a place opens — a family cancels, or you raise a ticket's Capacity — everyone watching is told at the same moment, and the first to register takes it. :::

That count is your honest measure of demand. If it stays high, ask the venue whether they can take more, then raise the Capacity on the ticket.

Tell everyone what they need to know​

Announcements go to the people connected to one activity, in their inbox and by email.

  1. Open Activities and select the trip.
  2. Scroll to Announcements.
  3. Write a Subject (optional) and a Message.
  4. Send, and confirm. The button names your own count, as in Send to 12 registrants.

From your inbox you also get a wider audience: Registered + interested reaches people who saved the activity as well as those who booked. That is the right choice for "three places left" and the wrong one for day-of logistics.

You cannot edit, delete or schedule an announcement. Send it when you mean it. See Members, roles, and messaging.

On the day​

Attendance is taken from the roster on a phone, one meeting at a time.

  1. Open the activity and select Take attendance, beside the Roster heading.
  2. Select the meeting you are running.
  3. Mark each child Present, Late, Excused or Absent.
  4. Record Drop off when a child arrives and Pick up when they leave. Each stores the time and who recorded it.

Show sign-in QR puts a printable code on screen so parents can sign their own children in and out from their phones while you keep the queue moving. See Attendance and check-in.

Allergies, special needs and medical notes appear as badges under each child's name on the roster, so you have them at the venue without carrying paper.

If you have to cancel​

  1. Open the activity from Activities.
  2. Choose Cancel activity.
  3. Confirm.

Everyone registered is notified and the activity is unpublished. Every family is made whole: their card charge comes back in full, account credit returns to their balance, and scholarship coverage returns to their award. You do not choose the amount, and there is no partial refund anywhere in Famlo.

The 24-hour cutoff that governs a family cancelling their own booking does not apply when you cancel.

Tips​

  • Book the venue early. Spring and autumn fill fast, and the date decides everything else.
  • Ask for the homeschool rate by name. Many venues have one and do not advertise it.
  • Price per family when the venue does. That is what Per family scope is for, and it saves large families from being penalised.
  • Put the meeting point in the description, not just the address. "Main entrance plaza by the fountain" beats a pin.
  • Set capacity slightly under the venue's maximum. It leaves room for a sibling you did not expect.
  • Send one announcement two days out. Weather, parking and what to bring, in one message.
  • Repeat what works. A monthly museum visit is a repeating activity — see How Do I Set Up Recurring Events for My Group?.

Troubleshooting​

Families tell me they cannot find the trip. Check its visibility. Members only hides it from non-members, and Unlisted keeps it out of every listing including your own page.

I cannot find a waitlist toggle. There is not one. A full activity closes on its own, and families save it instead. Nothing is queued.

I cannot find where to add a question to the registration form. There is no per-activity question. Organization screening questions, capped at three, are the only ones Famlo asks.

I cannot find an export of who is coming. There is not one, for the roster or for attendance. The list on screen is the list.

Someone paid me in cash and I want to add them. There is no manual add and no walk-in registration. They have to register themselves, and you record the money as an offline payment.

I want to stop taking registrations before the date. There is no control for that. Capacity on the ticket is the only limit Famlo enforces.

The price field will not save. Payouts are not finished. A ticket cannot carry a price above $0 until your organization can accept money. See Getting paid.

I cannot see Activities in the console. Your role does not include it. Owners, co-leaders and event managers can open it; member managers, billing managers and members cannot.