Visiting a different place offers kids (and adults!) such a fabulous opportunity for learning. And, kids will get MORE out of their experience, understand it more, and communicate better if they have some connections to the new place BEFORE leaving. How do you do that without it being a ton of work?
- Find some engaging, kid-friendly books on the area. Usually Amazon is a good resource for searching/discovering books for different aged kids.
- Our running list of books we’ve used for different countries
- The “You wouldn’t want to be” series has been super engaging for our 7 year old. They are all about a culture and that time period through the lens of some type of person (a Mayan Soothsayer… an Egyptian mummy… a Roman Gladiator… one who’s married to Henry VIII… a Victorian schoolchild, etc). There are 44 (!!!) in the series, some more easily accessible on Amazon than others.
- Watch National Geographic, NOVA, etc movies/shows about the region you’re going to
- Pair watching movies/shows with a bingo board. It engages the kiddos to listen, think, etc, as opposed to just zoning out in front of a screen
- You can make an easy PICTURE bingo board here. You’ll first want to find pictures on the internet and save them (they can be any size/shape).Then upload them. Then the boards get generated and you can print them!
- For older kids, easily create a WORD bingo board here. You title the board, type the words, pick a theme, decide if you want a free space, etc – and it’ll generate up to 30 boards for free that you can download as a pdf…and then just print however many you need.
4. Create an activity packet
- Itinerary (pretty easy to do in google sheets, even with pictures for younger kiddos). Example here (coming soon)
- Map of where you’re going/staying. If you’re moving around, you can annotate a google map to show which night you are where and then print it (see below), or just print a city/town map if you’re in one place. If you’re planning to use public transportation, find an image of the subway map to print and help the child to find the closest stops to where you’ll be staying. (Icons I use for the map are here if you’d like to use them)
- Pictures of local things to be colored in (animals, famous buildings, famous person, etc). Best way to find those can be just google searching using phrases like: “image of <thing you’re looking for> for kids to color in”. Then you can either screen shot one you like or download it, etc. Examples:
- you’re going to Mexico City and want an image of Frida
- you’re going to the jungle and want a picture of a cobra
- you’re headed to Paris and want kids to color in the Eiffel Tower
- Pictures of local things to be colored in (animals, famous buildings, famous person, etc). Best way to find those can be just google searching using phrases like: “image of <thing you’re looking for> for kids to color in”. Then you can either screen shot one you like or download it, etc. Examples:
- Create a word scramble. This is super easy as there are lots of free online sites for generating word scrambles (I use this one on education.com). You type in the words, you select how big you want the scramble to be, generate it, and download it. Sample below.
- Fill-in-the-blank spelling. This is fun for kids who are learning to spell/write. Find a picture of a thing (person/place/animal/etc) and underneath it, have certain letters filled in and certain letters blank. (this can often be paired with the “pictures to be colored in”. You can do this in a word doc, ppt, google doc, etc – or even print the image and just write letters and blanks in by hand before giving it to your child. Whatever works! Sample below.
5. Go to a nearby restaurant with food from the place/culture you’re traveling to. This can help the kids get more familiar with the food and give them something to look forward to when they arrive. It can also spawn some fun conversations once you’re in-location about any differences from the food you tried before you left. An added bonus is that if the restaurant is authentic, they may have people FROM the place you’re going to who are generally excited to chat about their home, give you some travel or language tips, etc.
6. Ask the kids what key words they might want to know in the new language– and practice those. The key is to make sure the KIDS actually care about the words because they’re a lot more likely to learn the words if the words are important to them. Perhaps it’s “bathroom” and “pizza”… really, it doesn’t matter what they are, as long as the kids are interested. And then there are myriad ways to learn those words…
- If you have an “Alexa” device, the kids can ask Alexa “Alexa, how do you say “bathroom” in German?” (or whatever). This has been our family’s favorite for sure…And it’s really nice that the kids themselves can ask whenever they want!
- Google translate, which also has an audio function.
- Youtube (we’ve found lots of language resources there in our searches)
If you have other ideas that should be added here, please reach out and let me know!
Leave a Reply