US 4th Graders Get A Free Pass

I’m not really an outdoorsy person, but I play one on TV.

I’m kidding.

I’m a redhead who doesn’t love summer, but there are days I join my family on outdoor adventures to make some memories, despite all the prep work to prevent myself from becoming a burn victim.

Yes, sometimes I play along anyway.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

We were headed to see my daughter’s “fighting off bad guys” demo after a week at Safety Camp. She learned all about Stranger Danger, fire, water, outdoor, and home safety.

I got in the car on a July day in Georgia.

The minute I sat down, I noticed the vent was blowing nothing but hot air. I was ready to march back inside the house—actually, I did to get a couple of ice packs. Naturally, I was threatening divorce and vowing to no longer participate in summer outings. At. All. If I had to endure a summer in a car with no air conditioning.

Perimenopause rage and heat intolerance are no joke.

I told my husband I seriously wasn’t leaving the house until October.

I may not.

I did my best to calm down, and to my pleasant surprise, the bad guy demo was inside. Air conditioning!

There is a God! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

And yes, I apologized to my husband.

When we were vacationing in St. Augustine in April, after we’d seen the Fountain of Youth and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and after we’d decided to go to dinner at a French restaurant, I was willing to make the trek to the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument.

Granted, April, even in Florida, is not July in Georgia.

When the topic of visiting Castillo de San Marcos came up, I didn’t fight it.

It was historical.

It was educational.

It was sandwiched between weird stuff at the indoor Ripley’s museum and a Brie Truffle Honey Sandwich at the French restaurant.

How could I say no?

Nope, I didn’t hesitate.

I was happy to accompany my family through the thick humidity toward the massive stone monument, where there was no circulating air. To learn things and… sweat. A lot. YAY! Detoxification.

Yes, yes, the place was a stone monument to the Spanish conquistadors and all that history. But what got my attention most was when the park ranger asked my daughter what grade she was in.

“Next year, you should sign up,” the ranger told her, “4th graders get a free pass to enter all federal parks nationwide.”

FREE!

It’s a swooning word for all us homeschooling mamas.

If you don’t know about this program, it’s called Every Kid Outdoors, and it does indeed give your U.S. fourth grader and their family (that’s you) free entry to over 2,000 federal recreation sites nationwide. The pass covers your student and any accompanying passengers in the same vehicle.

Think about it.

If you’ve got 4 kids, they’ll all be 4th graders at some point, and you’ll all get free access for a full year for everyone in your family— that’s 4 years to enjoy the national parks and federal lands all over the US!

The Every Kid Outdoors pass is valid from September 1 of their fourth-grade year through August 31 of the following year.

***Just note that if you want to use it before September, you can sign up and print a paper pass. But that pass will expire August 31, 2026, so you’ll need to print a new one for the school year beginning September 1.

You don’t even have to put in any personal information.

You just have your child answer a few game-like questions (or you can answer them), and a printable paper pass pops up. There are also certain locations where you can trade your paper pass in for a plastic one, so you don’t have to continually print out new passes as your paper one degrades.

Look, as a current perimenopausal mama, the last thing I want to do is pack up and go spend a day outside in 75% humidity.

But fall is right around the corner, and there are so many great options with this nationwide pass.

For us in Georgia, the pass means:

• Seeing endangered species at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

• Learning war history at the Andersonville National Historic Site

• Camping at Doll Mountain in the North Georgia Mountains

Okay, so I’m not going camping, but I absolutely plan for us to do more hiking once the leaves start to change. And those are just things to do in our one state. With the pass, you have access to all parks nationwide!

Yes, even a redhead like me can make use of this gift with her family this year.

Suppose you’re not a nature lover, but your child is?

I discovered a workaround for that, too!

Recently, while my daughter was in Safety Camp, I got the rare opportunity to take some professional development classes. If you don’t know, PaTTAN—Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network—is the bomb when it comes to the Science of Reading and Literacy. They host a PaTTAN Literary Symposium every other year, and all the free classes have just been posted. Go check them out!

The biggest names in SOR teach classes on topics like explicit instruction, reading issues for older students, and instructional design.

I was playing a phone game called Arrows Go while watching the classes.

I know. I know. I should be focused on the teaching, but it keeps my hands busy. I realized that after about 425 levels into this game, I had failed to notice the simplest technique right at my fingertips.

If I get stuck on a level, all I have to do is rotate my phone. And a path appears.

Ta-dah! New perspective.

So now, I’m turning my phone 360 degrees to see opportunities from every possible angle.

This is how homeschooling works.

If you find yourself up against a wall, you look at it from a different perspective and work it out.

I wouldn’t exactly say my daughter is a nature lover; she’s a little socialite who wants to be where the action is among friends. And lately that’s been in the woods. So, we had to change up our school schedule this year.

We found a homeschool, parent-run organization that meets for one full day a week on a farm, teaching everything from games to survival skills around a specific educational or historical theme.

Yep, starting in August, she’ll be off to run wild in the woods for one full day of the week. She’ll get to work with farm animals, do some gardening, rope knotting—or whatever that class is—and get BB rifle training. They’re even discussing beekeeping for future classes.

And that means I get a day off from teaching to catch up on curriculum planning and admin stuff without having to trek through the woods to entertain my daughter.

I’m incredibly grateful for the parents who step up and teach this program; I just happen not to be one of them. If you want me to teach creative writing or come up with a Socratic class on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I’m your girl.

But P.E. and woodsy stuff: you’re best to leave me out of it.

I’m seeing this as a win-win.

We tilted our perspective.

Just like I did with the Arrows Go game.

I’ll go hiking in the fall, and my daughter will get all-day social time with her friends in the woods.

Keep my example in mind as you start your homeschool year.

Check out what is being offered locally in your area around homeschooling. Home education is iconically associated with being outside A LOT! But some of us truly aren’t outdoorsy people. Or there’s a mismatch between our personality and our outdoorsy children. Or vice versa.

There’s almost certainly some kind of workaround for your family.

You may need to teach as many classes as possible when you homeschool, but carefully consider which skills you can provide vs. areas where your children may need to learn from someone else.

This doesn’t always mean paying big bucks.

Sometimes it’s just trading time with another mom. Or finding alternative ways to learn. Reserving the bigger financial investments for the things you or your significant other can’t teach on your own.

For example, I would never enroll my daughter in an art class. For one, art was my specialty, and there’s plenty I can teach her. Secondly, she’d most likely turn it into a social engagement, distracting everyone from the actual lessons. She seemed interested in drawing last year when I had her buddy over for English tutoring. He was a natural-born artist who loved to doodle and draw, but when the year ended, my daughter admitted the truth to me:

She was only interested in art because he was.

So no, I’m not paying big money for art classes.

I tend to intertwine art appreciation with language arts, and then when she takes an interest in something artistic, I coach her on it until she loses interest in about a day.

We also don’t pay for swim lessons. There’s a small pool in our neighborhood, and my husband was a lifeguard and swim team member in high school, so he’s the one devoted to her aquatic interests.

Now we did spring for Mermaid Camp this year, because who could teach your child to be a mermaid better than the mermaids of Weeki Wachee?

No one! I simply don’t possess those skills.

My daughter’s also shown an aptitude for music from an early age. Neither my husband nor I possess music skills. We knew this was an area we’d need some outside support.

Providing our own swim and art lessons and covering all the core curriculum at home frees up money for things like ongoing music classes and mermaid camp.

It can be really challenging to figure out how to balance all of this, but take an inventory. Note:

• What you’re good at

• What you can teach/What you’d like to teach

• Where you’re going to need some outside support

Then decide where to best allocate your resources.

I also want to give a big shout-out to my friend Young for her help recently after I had surgery. She took my daughter to the park and to the splash pad several days while I was recovering.

She’s the fun mom, while I’m the get-it-done mom.

We all have our strengths.

Consider how you could work with another mom to balance out your children’s and her children’s needs.

I taught her son language arts last year, so this trade has really worked out for both of us. And I couldn’t be happier with how we use our specific skills to personalize our homeschools. We’re just two families—me and one other mom—figuring out how to step up and help each other.

Homeschooling really can be that simple.

So ask yourself: How will you make this homeschool year easier on yourself?

How can you make this homeschool year easier for yourself?

• What are your talents, gifts, and strengths? The things you’re best at and would love to show someone how to do? No outside help needed.

• What areas of homeschooling require you to do the work and no one else?

• In what areas do you need some support?

• What areas can you delegate to someone else?

• Who can you rely on to come through for you?

• What local organizations offer free or discounted days or events for homeschoolers?

• What extracurricular activity or membership group is worth splurging on to ensure your kids get what they need?

• Are there inexpensive or short-term programs that can help balance your free time with your child’s need for activities?

• If you’re signing up for the Every Kid Outdoors free pass, what parks do you plan to visit?

Don’t forget to get your pass for your 4th graders.

Go to Every Kid Outdoors and sign up for the full year!

To read more about taking your curriculum on the road, you can start with my series Get Lost:

Travel

Get Lost

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May 26

Before I knew what education was, Roadside America was already offering up its wisdom to me.

Or read how last year we created our own Beach School: