Simple Eco-friendly Field Trip Organizing

The school year has begun, and so has planning for field trips!

In the past, when organizing a field trip, I would draft a consent form. I would include details about the trip and its purpose, as well as a section at the bottom that parents could cut and return to school (hopefully) in a ziplock back with the money required to pay for their child’s expenses for the field trip.

When field trip time would come around, students would submit the money and consent forms many ways. I have received consent forms in baggies that don’t have a zip top, I have found it paper clipped and/or stapled to a in part of or the entire consent form, I have found loose money on the floor that may have fallen out of a student’s agenda with no consent form attached, or any way of identifying whose money it is.

Last year I finally came up with a solution to my problems. I created a template for consent forms that are printed on envelopes, which parents could use to sign for consent and seal in field trip fees.

For my field trip to the ostrich farm last year, I was even able to repurpose some envelopes with some label stickers and print on top of them.

Below is an example of an eco-friendly field trip consent forms I used for a field trip to the local ice cream parlour. I added a table to the back of the envelope on which parents could indicate their child’s treat preferences on the back.

I got so much positive feedback from parents and administrators from different schools who’d learned about my new method of organizing field trips that I decided to make editable eco-friendly field trip consent forms for different themes and various destinations, as well as check lists and organization pages.