Planning a U.S. National Parks Study

by

Whether you are planning a visit to one or more National Parks in the U.S. this summer,  looking for some fun at-home summer learning options, planning homeschool units, or chasing deep interests for yourself or your children, learning about the National Parks together can be a joy for all ages.

This can be as academic or as laid back as you’d like. You might want to use the National Parks to cover some core subjects like geography, science and some history. Or you might choose to focus on the beauty of the parks, travel planning, or learning about tourism. 

For whatever grabs your interest and makes your family want to dive in a bit deeper, we’ve got you covered with simple planning steps and a whole lot of great resources!


This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, if you purchase something through one of these links and use the discount codes provided, we may earn an affiliate commission at no cost to you.

All products and brands recommended are hand selected by our team, so thank you for supporting us by clicking through!

A family sits together at the Badlands National Park sign.

Building a National Park Study

Building a national park study does not have to be complicated, and can be as rigorous or as relaxed as you’d like! Our goal here is to add some fun learning into family life with little to no stress to you. Here’s a quick look at the steps for planning, and we’ll dig into each further below.

Know Your ‘Why’

There are many great reasons to learn more about national parks, and briefly thinking through why this is appealing to you and your family can help guide your planning. You might be wanting to plan some national park learning if you are:

  • Visiting a certain park or parks.
  • Looking to add laid back, family-style summer learning.
  • Planning for homeschool science, history, or geography.
  • Following your or your kids’ interests.

Knowing why you want to learn more about the national parks will help you as you start to choose resources.

A mother and 3 children listens to a National Park Ranger.

Choose Your Resources

It can be easy to get bogged down once you start looking into the many resources available for learning about national parks. To keep your planning simple and low stress, consider how your family likes to explore information together.

Do you enjoy digging into great books and maps? Gathering for games and puzzles? Watching videos on topics? Getting messy with crafts or experiments? Would audiobooks and activity books work best for your family rhythm?

There’s no wrong answer, and quality resources for any and all learning style!

Also consider what your general timeline is for your national park learning. If you are planning an ongoing homeschool study, it might make sense to choose one or two resources from each of the categories below. If you are planning a national park road trip, a totally different set of resources could be a better fit. If you are looking to plan summer learning, low-prep and playful might be your go-to.

We’ll give you lots of specifics below, and knowing what type of resource tends to pull your family in, and what time constraints you will have can you help you make great choices for your time and your wallet!

Put it All Together to Fit Your Rhythm

Your rhythm or schedule for national park learning really depends on your big-picture timeline, why you are planning this study, and what resources you choose. You may have ideas brewing as to how this study can work for your family.

Take a look at resource options below, and then we’ll give you some examples of how to put it all together for a few different learning scenarios, like on a national park road trip, at-home summer learning, a homeschool mini-unit, or a homeschool extended study.

Junior Ranger badges on a vest.

Resources for Every Learning Style

To help you kickstart your planning, I’ve first summarized a few reference books, or spines, and paired each with an activity book. From there I gathered a short list of narrative books- picture books and chapter books, ideas of hands-on and play-based resources for a variety of learning styles, and a round-up of various types of digital resources.

With a subject as a broad and robust as national parks, there are more resources available than we could possibly ever count and summarize for you, but here are some of our favorites to get you started.

Hard Copy Resources

As I plan learning adventures in my own home, I always start with a stack of books. We use digital resources as well, but starting with books guarantees that we have a resource we can see and touch, something we can bring along with us, and something we don’t have to worry about charging or protecting like we would a screen.

Books

Reference Books and Spines

Reference books and spines are an anchor for your learning adventure. This is where to start, and where to return to, for big-picture information. Using one or two reference books or spines is also a great way to take notice of what your children become fascinated with within a subject, and to then grow your plans from there.

Here are a few varied favorite spines. Pick what excites you and works for your family learning styles and needs!

  • National Parks of the USA by Kate Siber
    • A beautiful book focused on basic maps, flora, and fauna of all of the national parks, with a creative introductory passage about each park.
    • Pair with: The National Parks of the USA journal, activity book, postcard book, or 500 piece puzzle.
    • Best For: Art-loving families, gentle science-focused national park learning.
  • Eyewitness National Parks
    • A comprehensive guide to all of the national parks, filled with beautiful photographs, maps, timelines, statistics, diagrams, accounts from experts in the field, and facts that cover flora and fauna, park features, and cultural information.
    • Pair with: DK Sticker Encyclopedia National Parks
    • Best for: Comprehensive factual learning about the national parks, families that like photography over illustration, extended learning.
  • America’s National Parks by Alexa Ward
    • A Lonely Planet Kids book offering facts and things to see and do in each park, with a short passage for each park that sets the scene of that park.
    • Pair with: Lonely Planet Kids America’s National Parks Activity book
    • Best for: Families that like photography over illustration, travel-focused national park learning
  • National Parks USA Guide by National Geographic Kids
    • Focuses on interesting facts, sights, and activities in parks across the nation.
    • Pair with: Junior Ranger Activity Book by National Geographic Kids, National Parks of the USA Journal.
    • Best for: Kids who enjoy factual tidbits, national park road trips
  • The National Parks Classroom: A Guide to Designing Project-Based Learning Adventures
    • This book teaches how to incorporate project-based, culturally responsive, inquiry-based learning into all subjects, using the National Parks Classroom model that park rangers utilize in their own educational programming.
    • Pair with: An additional spine focused on the parks
    • Best for: Learning how to design project-based learning, use in group settings, and extended study

Activity Books

Activity books can be great for passive learning, for sparking interest, and for educational fun on road trips or camping trips.

While each of these is paired with a spine above, if you aren’t wanting to use a spine or reference book, you can definitely still use these awesome activity books!

  • National Parks of the USA, Activity Book by Kate Siber offers a variety of activities, a fold-out poster, and lots of stickers, all done in the same beautiful style as the main book.
  • National Parks of the USA, Journal by Kate Siber is perfect for the family traveling to national parks. You can do this all together, or have your children fill out the information. Either way, you will be creating a beautiful travel keepsake.
  • National Parks of North America Amazing Animals Sticker Painting Book is perfect for art-loving kids, quiet time on summer days, and road trip entertainment. Along with a paint-by-sticker of 12 animals, kids will also get to learn a few facts about each animals and which national park they live in, as well as take a look at national park maps.
  • Sticker Encyclopedia National Parks by DK features simple, factual text about a variety of national parks, and kids can add flora and fauna stickers to the pages to create their own scenes. Great for play-based learning, and younger learners.
  • Lonely Planet Kids America’s National Parks Activity Book combines interesting facts with activities like crosswords, word scrambles, and mazes, geared toward 6-8 year olds.
  • Junior Ranger Activity Book by National Geographic Kids also combines facts with puzzles and games, but is geared toward slightly older children, from 8-12 years old.

Narrative Books

There are many books about individual national parks that are easy to find if your family is curious about a specific park. Here are a few general national parks books to get you started.

  • National Parks Mystery Series by Aaron Johnson is a fictional chapter book series featuring three children following clues left by one of their grandfathers. They are working to solve a larger mystery while exploring national parks. This series works as a read-aloud for a variety of ages, as books for independent reading time, or as audiobooks.
  • Campground Kids by C.R. Fulton is a fictional chapter book series that follows three children on adventures through various national parks, highlighting certain character traits like honesty and self-worth in each book. This is another great series for reading aloud, independent reading, or audiobooks.
  • The Camping Trip That Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir and our National Parks by Barb Rosenstock is a picture book about the 1903 camping trip that Roosevelt and Muir took in Yosemite, which ultimately led to the creation of national parks and forests. Use this as a read-aloud to enjoy the illustrations.
  • National Parks A to Z by Gus D’Angelo is a great book for younger learners. Each letter of the alphabet features a different national park, an animal native to that park, and an outdoor activity in the park.
  • If I Were a Park Ranger by Catherine Stier is a fun picture book that can be used to showcase what it’s like to work as a park ranger. The story highlights a variety of jobs that park rangers do, with a bit of national park history mixed in.

Play-Based and Hands-On Resources

Adding these types of resources to your national park learning is great for enriching a national park visit, either before or after a trip. These are also a great way to bring national park learning to life for families learning from home during the summer or the school year.

Here are a variety of resources to choose from. There is no need to choose something from each category. After all, some kids will engage with a craft and others with a science experiment, while other families connect over games and puzzles. Pick what works for your family!

An All-In-One Approach: Unit Studies

If you would prefer to spend less time perusing hands-on and play-based activities for your national park learning, consider a national park unit study that’s done the planning for you! These incorporate art, science, geography, history, and more and you can use it as a menu, picking and choosing what works for your family.

  • Passport to the Parks from Local Passport Family is a free resource that can be found right in the link. It features 10 national parks, and 5 activities for each park: a picture book suggestion with a free read-aloud video, a brief paragraph on indigenous history, an art or STEM project, a conservation project, and an outdoor activity. The pacing is flexible- study one park a day for 10 days, one a week for 10 weeks, or one a month for 10 months.
  • Rabbit Trails through the Parks from Rabbit Trails Homeschool can be purchased as a full unit featuring 10 parks, or each of the ten parks can be purchased individually. Each park study is designed to take 2 weeks, and includes hands-on projects, copy work, and book recommendations.
  • Traveling the Parks from The Waldock Way is a comprehensive study that could easily span a school year, or be used as a menu to learn about individual parks. For 60 parks, the study includes student mapwork and a park profile page, animal profiles, post cards and brochure projects, as well as a teacher’s guide with book and game lists, hands-on activities, and a QR code to a virtual tour of each of the 60 parks. This study uses America’s National Parks from Lonely Planet as a spine and includes a ‘Who Was Theodore Roosevelt’ mini-unit.
  • Explore National Parks and Landforms from Knowledge Crates is a bigger investment that delivers everything you need to your doorstep for hands-on art and science learning about national parks.

A DIY Approach: Mix and Match

If you like to mix and match your plans from a variety of sources, check out these ideas below to get you started.

Arts and Crafts

A child draws in a journal outside.

Science of the Parks

Children dissect owl pellets.

National Park Games and Puzzles

Digital Resources

Along with hard copy resources and hands-on resources, adding digital resources to your plan will give you a well-rounded learning adventure that can spark your family’s interest in a different way.

Audiobooks

Websites

Online Programs and Interactive Activities

Documentaries, Docu-Series, and Videos

In-Person Resources

If your family is visiting a national park or parks, plan on stopping in visitor centers, checking out interpretive programs, and participating in Junior Ranger programs to enrich your visit with lots of invaluable place-based learning!

As you explore, allow yourselves to slow down and notice little things in the environment, use apps like Seek and Merlin to identify what you are seeing and hearing, bring along a few basic naturalist tools like binoculars, magnifying glasses, field guides, and a nature journal. Ask lots of questions, and dig for the answers.

Another great resource for touring through national parks (and many other locations) is an audio guide! TMM Team Member Jami has used Guide Along many times, and recommends to anyone driving through the parks. Lots of great information, history, and points of interest. You just download the guide to your phone before your trip and then it will autoplay through your vehicles audio based on your GPS.

Enjoy learning together!

We love using Guide Along when we travel! We have used it in Hawaii, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Black Hills, Badlands, Banff and Jasper. We love the info provided. We always give a name to our narrator as well, and we always look forward to the fun facts “FredBob” gives us!

TMM Team Member Jami
A national park ranger and a child look at a guide together outside.

Putting It All Together to Fit Your Rhythm

Now that you have dug into a handful of resources to kickstart your family’s national park learning journey, it’s time to mix and match resources that excite you and your family, and fit your goals, learning styles and budget.

Here are a few ideas of how to bundle the above resources for your family’s goals:

  • For a summer road trip study, use:
    • Audiobooks for the car
    • An activity book for the car
    • A book series for independent reading or bedtime read-aloud
    • In-person resources at the park
    • 1-2 Digital and hard copy resources for learning before and after
  • For an at-home summer study or homeschool mini-unit, use:
    • One spine to explore together
    • One activity book
    • 1-2 narrative books for read-aloud or independent reading
    • 1-2 hands-on, play-based resources
    • Audiobooks for quiet time
    • 1-2 Digital Resources to bring the parks to life
  • For a homeschool extended study, use:
    • A pre-planned unit study
    • OR:
    • 1-2 spines
    • 1 activity book
    • Narrative books that focus on individual parks and history of the national park system
    • One science and/or art project for each park you focus on
    • 1-2 play-based resources, like a game and a puzzle, for broad information
    • A mix of digital resources to bring the parks to life
A baby sits in front of a sign for Capitol Reef National Park.

Whether you are looking to plan a year-long homeschool study, laid-back summer learning, or extras for a national park road trip learning about the national parks can be a great way to bring nature, science, history, geography, culture, and more into family learning.

However you choose to go about your national park study, keep it simple, choose resources that excite you and your family, and enjoy your learning adventure together!

Related Articles

Planning a U.S. National Parks Study

© 2026, Tales of a Mountain Mama. All rights reserved. Republication, in part or entirety, requires a link back to this original post and permission from the author.

Cece Romanyshyn

Cece Romanyshyn is a Colorado native currently living in Baker City, Oregon with her husband and two sons. She grew up camping and skiing with her family, and kept adventuring through adulthood. She has enjoyed camping, hiking, skiing, and boating in the western United States, hiking in Ecuador, DIY safaris in East Africa, boating on the rivers of Southeast Asia, and exploring nature and culture during Peace Corps service in Mozambique. She loves connecting with her little family on all sorts of adventures from daily walks and river play to ski days to camping road trips, boating, and hut trips. With the confidence, joy, and well-being brought about in these spaces, time outside together has become a parenting power tool for her.

Leave a Comment