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Let Family Trips Teach Powerful Life Skills
There’s so much more to homeschooling and educating our children than the 3 R’s isn’t there? We all want our kids to achieve a healthy balance of activity, academics, and life skills. One great way to learn all these at the same time is to travel, as a family, to exciting places that allow you to learn on location (and on the way to the location). I want to share a few ways family trips teach life skills and travel lessons for kids.
Family travel Life Skills: #1 Organization
Learning to pack a suitcase, carry-on or backpack is a skill that can be started early and refined with each excursion, outing, or sleep-over. Teaching kids to pack (and carry) their own luggage is a skill for which their future roommate, travel buddy, or spouse will thank you!
Our kids have been packing and carrying their own suitcases since they were 6 & 9 using my unique packing tutorial. Now at 10 & 13, they know what to pack and how to pack for just about any type of trip. We’ve even packed everything we needed into a carry-on and a backpack each for a 2-week winter trip to Switzerland. That’s right, snow gear, boots, and sweaters. We even had room for a few souvenirs coming home!
Are you ready for your family to be more organized for travel? Grab your free packing tutorial and help your kids take the next step toward independence and responsibility.
Family travel Life Skills: #2 Mapping
At our house, we spend quite a bit of time learning about world geography in books and digital resources. But being in a location and having to find your way around either by car or on foot, is a whole new kind of lesson. Allowing your kids to use a mapping app like Google Maps or Google Earth to get everyone from point A to point B is a whole new level of map learning skills and orienteering.
Take a hike and use a compass and elevation map or grab a paper street map and explore a city. Orienteering skills are almost a lost art but can be so fun when there isn’t the pressure to catch a train or flight. Start in your own backyard. Then expand to learning about the neighborhood, town, and eventually with the older kids, a travel destination that is unfamiliar. Your kids will grow in knowledge and understanding and be ready to apply these skills wisely in other everyday situations.
Family travel Life Skills: #3 Teamwork
Learning to work as a team is a skill even parents have to practice and refine. Travel is the perfect training ground to learn leadership and teamwork. Setting up and breaking camp, grocery shopping in a market in a foreign country (trust me teamwork makes this so much easier), ordering food in a foreign country, and problem-solving everyday challenges outside in unfamiliar locations. All these take you outside your comfort zone. They stretch each family member and reveal each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We all know there will be at least 1 day during your travels where weaknesses outweigh strengths and everyone is going to have to learn how to bear one another’s burdens. Go, Team!
Family travel Life Skills: #4 Safety
We talk a lot about safety with our kids, don’t we? But there is a different kind of learning about safety that can come into play when you travel. Things like
- What to do if you get separated from your family/group in an unfamiliar city.
- Keeping track of your belongings so they don’t get lost or stolen.
- Caring for important documents like your passport or ID card.
- How to spot a tourist scam.
- Why you need a safety code word that only your family knows.
We can talk, read books, play games, and role-play these skills with our kids, but having real-life opportunities and experiences is what makes this kind of learning last a lifetime.
Learning on Location
I’d like to say our family has learned all these life skills from hearing amazing stories from seasoned travelers or watching YouTube videos, but the truth is our best life skills lessons have come from:
- Running to catch a train because we got lost on our way to the train station.
- Popping a zipper on a carry-on because someone insisted on bringing an oversized stuffed animal.
- Watching unsavory individuals case a shopping center parking lot ALL DAY (we happened to go there both in the morning and again in the evening) looking for unsuspecting victims to scam.
- Witnessing a mafia drug deal go down in the seats next to us on a commuter train in Italy.
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Learning Life Skills Through Travel
Should these types of events keep you from traveling and learning life skills as a family? No Way! These are the lessons of life that will stay with kids longer than any textbook quiz or even hands-on experiment. You can talk to your family until you are blue in the face about how to
- be safe,
- use a map and
- stay organized,
but until you hit the streets and have to encounter
- how to be safe,
- when to notice and remember a landmark for later, or
- the realization that you have to carry your luggage up subway and train station stairs in many European cities,
the lessons just don’t stick, do they? We want these lessons to stick! We really want our families to learn in a safe, loving, family environment whenever possible, don’t we?
So…be THAT family.
Go for it! Be THAT family that travels together and comes home with epic tales of adventure, courage, and a greater sense of togetherness. Capture your memories, share your stories, and plan the next learning-on-location adventure together. Apply the lessons learned to your geography and current events schoolwork, your literature, history, and even your math and language arts.
Every time you travel, make teachable moments come alive with your family by learning on location using the world as your textbook to learn life skills through family travel.
If you’re ready to do more traveling with your family and learn your family travel and learning style, sign-up for your free printable that will help you decide “This or That?” as you learn on location as a family.
Find out your family’s learning & travel style with this FUN resource
Life Skills for Teens
Read more about how to help your teens mature with confidence.
Your Family Travel & Life Skills Questions Answered
Family travel is important for many reasons. It can help families bond, create lasting memories, and learn about new cultures and places. It can also help children develop important life skills, such as problem-solving, communication, and independence.
Here are a few of the life skills that children can learn from family travel:
Problem-solving: When things don’t go according to plan on a trip, children learn to think critically and come up with solutions. For example, if a flight is canceled or a hotel reservation is lost, children can learn to work with their parents to figure out what to do next.
Communication: Family travel provides opportunities for children to practice their communication skills. They need to communicate with their parents about their needs and wants, and they also need to communicate with people from different cultures.
Independence: Family travel can help children learn to be more independent. They may need to pack their own bags, take care of their own belongings, and navigate new surroundings. This can help them build confidence and self-reliance.
Here are a few tips for making family travel more educational:
Do some research before you go. Learn about the history, culture, and geography of the places you’ll be visiting. This will help you and your children get the most out of your trip.
Visit museums and historical sites. This is a great way for children to learn about different cultures and time periods.
Talk to locals. One of the best ways to learn about a place is to talk to the people who live there. Ask them about their culture, their food, and their way of life.
Encourage your children to ask questions. Curiosity is essential for learning. Don’t be afraid to let your children ask questions about the places you’re visiting.
Make it fun! Learning should be enjoyable. If your children are having fun, they’re more likely to retain the information they’re learning.
Here are a few tips for making family travel more affordable:
Plan ahead. The earlier you start planning your trip, the more time you’ll have to find good deals on flights, hotels, and activities.
Be flexible with your travel dates. If you can, avoid traveling during peak season. Prices for flights and hotels are typically lower during the off-season.
Consider staying in vacation rentals instead of hotels. Vacation rentals can often be more affordable than hotels, especially for families.
Cook your own meals. Eating out can be expensive, so save money by cooking your own meals. Pack snacks and drinks for the car and for outings.
Take advantage of free activities. There are many free activities available in most cities and towns, such as visiting parks, museums, and libraries.
With a little planning, it’s easy to have a fun and affordable family vacation.
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