Pack Literacy For Your Vacation
School may be the farthest thing from your mind when packing for a family vacation but that doesn’t mean learning and literacy need to be left on the shelf at home. Follow these simple steps and your family can strengthen their literacy skills throughout your journey, usually without them knowing you have a learning agenda.
When you are planning a family vacation, involve your children in the planning and research stages. This can be especially fun for older children. They can use on line resources to discover interesting facts about the destination and unique things to do when you get there.
1. Research books set in your destination and consider reading one or two as a family. It may offer you a glimpse into the differences between your destination and your home. This can lead to some interesting discussion before and after vacation. Try both fiction and non-fiction books as fiction can also give you a real sense of a place. For younger children picture or photo books can help them prepare for a trip to a new place.
2. For a road trip, download some audio books or borrow a few from your local library so that you can listen as a family. This is a great way to enjoy a story if you are unable to read in a moving vehicle. Persevere through the process as it may take many suggestions before you find a book everyone is happy with.
3. If you don’t get car sick and are keen to read aloud, you can read to your children and the driver while on a road trip. With a print book, as opposed to an audio, it can be less disruptive to the story flow to pause and comment about the story. Joke books provide an engaging, distraction on long trips.
4. Think about packing some MadLibs books. They are stories with blanks so that you can take turns filling in the missing nouns, verbs and adjectives. Results are silly and hysterical. Your children will be too busy laughing to realize they are learning.
5. If you are traveling by plane you might download an audio book and you can each listen individually. If you cannot agree on a book, have each person pick their own title and then see who can convince other family members to read or listen to their choice on the way home. It is great fun to watch children get fired up over “their” book.
6. Keep reading to your children on vacation. If you are in a hotel on a travel vacation, read the guide book aloud at night so you can all prepare for the next day’s adventure.
7.Writing is essential to developing reading skills so consider keeping a family journal on vacation with each person making a daily entry. The younger children can draw the best part of their day. This will make a great memento or you can use it as the inspirational spark for a silly family story that will last longer than the time spent on vacation.
8. Pack a bag of books for the trip or destination. If you need to pack lightly, consider e books. They are great for travel.
9. Model reading behavior on vacation; make sure there’s some downtime every day.
10. Keep a book with you at all times so you can read to the kids while waiting in line. There’s never a reason to hear “I’m bored” when a book is in hand.
Sue LeBreton is a health and wellness journalist and mom of two. An avid reader, she uses family vacations as another method to spark her children’s interest in literacy. On a road trip across the prairies they listened to Eragon by Christopher Paolini.