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March 2008 Parent Newsletter
Spring Break: Add Education to Your Vacation
Parents can include educational opportunities and teachable moments as part of any vacation. If fact, non-school time is the time to show your child that learning happens anywhere and everywhere and is a lifelong process. However, it’s important not to over structure learning—let it happen naturally. Here are some simple ways to include education in your vacation.
Math
- Let your child assist with the budget for the trip.
- Estimate the miles that you’ll travel.
- Convert currency if you leave the country.
- Compare sales tax for different states or countries.
- Practice math facts in the car or plane.
Language Arts
- Set aside time each evening to read about what you will see the next day.
- Write letters to friends and family back home.
- Keep a daily journal.
- Play 20 questions about specific items you saw that day.
- Read the local paper together.
- Create a scrapbook that includes written descriptions of each location visited.
- Visit a museum’s gift shop and ask your child to choose five postcards depicting works of art on display. Conduct a treasure hunt to find each of them. Then have your child write something about each work on the back of the postcard. Save them for the scrapbook.
Social Studies/Geography
- Research the destination via the Internet before you leave.
- Print interesting documents to read in the car or plane.
- Visit the library to find travel books about your destination.
- Study maps of the areas before you leave. Bring them with you for referral.
- Discuss the differences in landscape and seasons.
- Identify five new things you learn about the new place/culture each day.
- Seek out factories that have tours so children can learn about how things are made (i.e. chocolate factory in Hershey, PA; teddy bear factory in San Francisco, CA; and glass blowing in Seattle, WA).
- Note the different foods of the region and what food groups they fall into.
- Trace your family history if you’re visiting relatives and create a family tree. Interview each family member to determine names of ancestors.
- Look for everything different in the new place you’re visiting (i.e. height of buildings, clothing styles, and restaurants) and compare them to what you have at home.
Learning can happen anywhere. Encourage your children to ask questions so they begin to understand that learning is an integral part of life and that it can actually be great fun.
2008 Parent Newsletters
2007 Parent Newsletters
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