How to Turn Your Vacation Into an Education

This summer, make your vacation educational no matter where you go with these simple and easy to implement tips and ideas!

My dad was 52 and my mom was 36 when I was born. They had both learned to slow down and enjoy life by that point. But, they were also fully aware of what truly mattered, and because of that fact my childhood vacations were not only slow-paced, but interesting and exciting and always educational.

I carried these experiences into my adulthood and melded them into my own parenting style alongside my husband who has always had a love of learning. Together, we took simple vacations and made them EDUcations, and if you ask my kids, they will tell you they never knew the difference and they always had a blast!

I want to share with you some ideas from our own family and from others’ experiences on how to take a vacation that often does something traditional homeschooling lessons can’t do for your children – put a hands-on component to it that really makes it stick in your children’s minds.

So let’s talk about how you can make this summer a Summer of Homeschooling that the kids won’t even realize is homeschooling. And guess what! They’re still going to consider this a vacation, and you will too!

Look for Museums Along Your Vacation Route

One of the first (and easiest) things you can do to make your vacation and education is to look around for museums and other stops that you can make along the way to your destination.

A lot of times we are so caught up in going from Point A to Point B that we miss a lot of the wonderful things there are in between. And our family was not immune to this despite our upbringing of going to lots of museums. It took a major life event that rocked our world to slow us down.

In 2008, we lost our daughter Emily and many things in our world changed – including how we vacationed. We wanted to do more as a family, but we also wanted to slow down. We’d always been pretty good with family first activities and enjoying things as a family, but we realized that we were racing through life, and we were missing the little moments.

And so on our vacation that year, we decided to stop at every single historical marker and a museum we had been passing by for years. We had seen it year after year because we traveled the same route every single year. In fact, my husband had even seen it when he was younger and traveled that same route.

But none of us had ever stopped.

None of us had ever taken the time because we were too busy getting from Point A to Point B. We just didn’t have the time to stop at some random museum (or so we thought). But after our daughter passed away, we were taking things a lot slower, breathing in life, enjoying life together, because we realized how short and those moments had been with her.

That year, we stopped at this particular museum along the route we always traveled to our destination, and it turned out to be a fantastic experience! A few years later, we stopped at another museum in a tiny little town along the route. This museum turned out to be totally free, and it even had a scavenger hunt that was really fun for the kids! The kids still talk about that trip, and it was over a decade ago!

A few years later, we stopped at another small town museum. Literally every single small town has their own museum, and typically those museums are free! They have a lot of local history, but they also have a lot of history that has to do with the region, so when you tour the museum, you actually have a chance to teach your children some history. And oftentimes, you will find science mixed into the exhibits. There are fun activities, experiments or information that lends itself to easy homeschool lessons at little to no cost!

Stop at Historical Markers Along Your Vacation Route

As I mentioned above, we also stopped at all the historical markers the year after Emily passed away. Usually they are on the side of the road with a little bit of a pull off for you to be able to move over out of traffic and read the sign.

It’s a really simple way to turn a vacation into an education!

HOW WE DO IT!
* Pull over alongside the road.
*Whomever is nearest the sign rolls down their window and reads with a loud voice the words on the sign to everyone in the vehicle.
*We share what we personally know about what we’ve read and the local area.
*Then, we Google anything we don’t know or any questions that come up so that we are all learning as we’re go!

It literally takes a minute or two to get off the highway, read the sign, and get back on. But that continues that educational learning experience and give your children something they wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to.

In fact, if you do nothing else except stop at those historical markers, you have done something most families never do! So take that time. It’s worth it!

Build extra time into your vacation.

Speaking of taking the time – that is really the key in turning your vacation into a learning experience! You have to build extra time into your vacation.

Unfortunately, this is where a lot of people get hung up about this concept. They don’t want to build in extra time. They don’t want to take more time getting from Point A to Point B.

That’s how my husband grew up. He told me that he and his dad would get up really early in the morning and drive and drive and drive until they got to their destination, barely stopping to go to the bathroom or eat. His dad had no interest in stopping at anything extra. (He didn’t even really want to stop to go to the bathroom or eat.) His dad just wanted to get to where he was going.

But as I shared earlier, we realized after our daughter’s death that racing through life was no way to live. We needed to slow down everything, and that included the time it took to get out to the place where we were vacationing.

So many of the beautiful, wonderful memories we now have of our vacations is because we took the time, we slowed down, we did something different. We took a different road. We stopped at a historical marker. We stopped at a museum. And all of that stuff takes time.

But I can attest to the fact that all of it is worth it.

There is a little place we pull off at to let our dogs run, and we often end up picnicking there as well. It served as a Japanese internment camp during WWII, and we would never have found it or learned its history had we not stopped at an obscure historical marker.

And that day, we made a choice not to eat in the car to save time, but to get out and picnic at the park area connected to the historical site. There we found lots of little signs along a walking path, and stories of a history we did not know, and never would have known had we not slowed down and added time to our trip.

Recognize that this kind of education on your vacation is going to take time, and you have to be willing to give it that time.

I know that sometimes, especially with kids, if you take a little bit of time you end up spending more money to stay in a hotel and eat on the road because it was not what you had planned on and you didn’t get out to Point B fast enough. So, instead of stopping at every sign or museum, give yourself a little extra time allowance – even if it’s just 30 minutes to stop and go to that free museum that’s on the side of the road that you keep saying, “Someday we’re going to stop there.”

Do it. Take the time. Spend an hour, spend 30 minutes, whatever it is that you can afford, and do it now. These are the moments you have to seize. These are the times when homeschooling just spills out into your everyday life, and you get to grab onto those moments! I promise you, these are the moments your kids are going to remember. Don’t allow your fears and your stresses to take over. Jump in with both feet and try it out this summer!

Vacation Education on the Go.

If you don’t feel like you can take any extra time whatsoever, I have another idea for you. Grab some brochures, some maps, a read aloud that has to do with the route you are following to get to your destination.

Almost every single gas station out there has some sort of brochure about the area that you’re in. Grab those up. Read from those aloud to your kids while you’re driving.

Choose a story to bring along with you on your journey that has something to do with what you’re doing on vacation. For instance, if you’re going to a national park, try to find a storybook that’s about that national park, or maybe there’s a historical figure who had something to do with the place you are going. Grab a storybook about them and read that to your children on the drive.

Use the time you have in the vehicle together wisely! You are probably not doing much beyond driving or navigating, so take the time to share some information and share an educational experience with your kids.

You may find yourself incredibly surprised by what your children retain. Perhaps a town or a person they learned about are mentioned later on down the road, and they suddenly perk up realizing they KNOW that story! You start to see those little connections being made. So building those connections on the go is a really good way to use that idle time while you are driving.

Audiobooks or Audio Dramas for a Road Trip

That leads me to another idea for making your vacation and education and wisely using that idle road trip time – audios! Put in an audio drama, something that your children can listen to while you are driving, and it will keep them entertained and while it educates them!

I firmly believe that any longer road trip ought to include audio dramas or audiobooks. Our children have listened to hundreds of hours worth of information they have retained to this day because of those family vacations where we were listening as we drove.

Some of our favorite Audio Dramas:
*Adventures in Odyssey (we LOVE our AIO Clubhouse membership and the Truth Chronicles are AMAZING!)
*Jonathan Park (Creation-based Science Audio Dramas)
*Brinkman Adventures

Nature Guides and Field Guides for Your Vacation

Another great way to turn your vacation into an education is to buy guides that go along with whatever it is you are going to be doing on vacation. Perhaps you’re going to the mountains like we do every year. You could buy a Nature Guide that goes along with the mountains, particularly for that area. This is an opportunity for hands-on science!

Nature Guides are fantastic! There are so many different ones out there. Buy a field guide about the birds or the insects of the area you’ll be in. A foraging book or a book about mushrooms would be fun too!

There are so many different ways that you can spin this idea!

Think about the things that you see when you are on vacation, no matter how humble or innocuous it may seem!

For instance, you are heading to a water park for vacation. It certainly doesn’t seem very education, but it can be if you buy a Nature Guide on water and read it to them on the way or in the evening before the big water park outing! If your children learn about water and then turn around and swim in that water, you have done something a lot of parents have never done! What a fantastic opportunity to teach your children in a low key way!

NOTE: I get it, it’s your vacation too, and you don’t want to necessarily be thinking about putting together lesson plans. That’s why the things I’m suggesting in this post are not really lesson plan based. They are not something you have to plan for extensively. They are as simple as picking up a book, grabbing a nature guide, looking at a map, putting in a CD, etc. Very, very simple things. You’re welcome!

Use Maps to Teach Navigation While on Vacation.

Vacations are a great opportunity for your kids to look at either a paper map or a map app. This is a fantastic way to teach your kids how to navigate. They can learn what symbols are on a map, how to figure distances, how to spot landmarks.

My kids like to pass around a paper map, but I also pass around my own phone for them to look at the map app on my phone. It’s been a great way for them to not only pass the time, but also to understand area landmarks and how maps work.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a third grader, we had to take a class on map skills. It was part of our math curriculum. I don’t know if they require that in public schools anymore since we all have phones that tell us where to go, but I think it is still a really good skill to have. There are times when the maps don’t work on our phones, or the cell reception isn’t good enough or there’s a glitch, and your kids need to know how to read the signs that are on the road and on a paper map. They need to be aware of their surroundings.

Ditch the DVD Player on Your Next Vacation

Have you gotten used to relying on DVD’s to entertain and keep your children quiet while you drive? Might I gently suggest you try something new this year and ditch the DVD plyaer?

I realize kids can get loud and unruly in the car and it can be quite stressful, but because we have gotten used to lulling our children with videos, they have lost the ability to look around their world and learn more about their world as you’re driving.

Even if you just take 30 minutes away from the DVD player and point out things along the side of the road, you are far ahead in giving them skills and understanding about the world around them than they would have had glued to a video.

Games We Play…
*Who can spot the first mountain?
*Who can spot the first antelope, elk, moose?
*We say goodbye to the last state and hello to the next state as we drive.
*Notice different names of roads, landmarks, and cities.
*Share stories of traveling this same road throughout the years.

As we play the games and share the stories, the trip is an education for our children they would not have gotten if we were simply putting in a DVD and letting them watch endless amounts of tv along the way.

So, while I don’t want to be militant about not using your DVD player, I would encourage you to 30 minutes to an hour here and there during the drive to converse with your children, read to your children, and share their surroundings with them. Help them to be aware of the world God has created. Point out the wildflowers, point out the hay bales, point out the animals. Point out all the different things that are in their world. It is very, very important for these little minds to explore the world at large.

Ask the Locals Where to Go on Your Vacation!

One last thing I would suggest you do while on vacation is super simple because everyone has to eat, so why not eat and explore like the locals. This has been something my Army husband has been really insistent on for years and years. He does not want to eat at chain restaurants if we can help it, and so he likes to ask the locals questions like…

“Where do you like to eat?”

“Where do you prefer to go on your day off?”

“What’s the local hangout?”

“What do locals like to do here?”

Recently, we had the most hilarious and wonderful experience with locals that we couldn’t wait to share with our kids. We were river rafting for our anniversary and the couple who were taking the photos for the river rafting invited us and our children (whom they had not met yet!) to come to Bingo Night in their little bitty town. They kept saying how much fun it was and how we just had to bring the kids because it was only 25¢ a card! We didn’t end up going to Bingo, but we did end up going with them to hunt for amethyst by the river!

I tell this story because we were really excited to share in something the locals do (even if we didn’t actually get to do it). It was not something the average vacationer would do when they come to the area and knowing that information made our experience unique.

In fact, we talked to this couple more about their suggestions for food, places to shop, and even found out about a little Amish warehouse where they like to shop. They offered us lots of little nuggets of information that people only know if they live there and nobody tells you unless you ask.

Here’s the thing…you are already in the area, you need to eat, and you are probably looking for things to do. So, grab a local and ask them questions and take their advice!

Other questions you can ask:
*Where do you like to shop?
*Where do you like to eat?
*What’s something you think is unique about this town that we ought to see or do?

Most locals are thrilled to share the unique side of the place they call home. They might share one of those really inexpensive museums with you. They might tell you about something out in the countryside, some landmark nobody knows about except the locals. The locals know where to get the best Poutine, the best Italian Beef, the best Empanadas.

There are so many really great treasures people miss or gloss over when they’re vacationing because of trying to get from Point A to Point B, or because they are only there for the water park or for the amusement park, or because it isn’t on their itinerary. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to find the real hidden treasures and give your children a special experience and education along the way?

So no matter where you are vacationing this summer, even if it is just in the area you are living in, turn it into an education. Use these tips, and you will not be disappointed. You will be making memories and you will be continuing that homeschool education throughout the summer.

Your children won’t even know and you won’t even have to do lesson plans!