There’s nothing better than the excitement and anticipation of an upcoming family vacation.
It is a time to unwind and spend quality time together making new memories.
But there is another surprising benefit of travel on children that will have you booking your next trip right away!
Of course, travel has many benefits for both kids and adults. Perhaps the most obvious are spending time as a family and experiencing new people and places.
Kids can learn to appreciate different cultures and put history in perspective with educational trips to museums or historic places.
And fun trips to amusement parks and beaches can still be teaching opportunities as travel increases character traits like flexibility, adaptability, and curiosity.
Even the most routine-driven kids will enjoy “letting loose” and trying new things on vacation.
But travel does something even more amazing for kids. It can actually make them more intelligent and improve school performance.
Children’s First Foundation reported:
Children who experience travel [are found to have] higher grades, stronger college applications, and enhanced career prospects. Travel has also shown to increase intellectual capacity and emotional abilities. It has consistently shown to improve academic success.
Families who frequently travel find that their kids are more excited to learn and open to new experiences.
They show more interest in the world around them, often becoming avid readers (maybe because they spend a lot of time in the car or on other forms of transportation!).
And the academic benefits go hand-in-hand with the emotional boost that travel gives children.
When they are able to freely explore and learn with their family about the world around them, it boosts their confidence, self-awareness, and desire to learn more.
Because of this, they are more apt to participate in class, more interested and involved in their lessons, and learn self-guidance to read and research – hence the improved performance in school!
Homeschool families have long been aware of this trend, and this is why most homeschooled children excel for their grade levels and do a great deal of independent study. They learn for the love of learning.
From day trips to museums, working farms, and battlefields, to longer trips exploring cities rich in history, homeschool families often build their curriculum around travel destinations near and far.
Or, due to their flexibility in what they teach and where, they take frequent trips and then find a way to tie it into academic lessons.
Much in the way public and private schools take field trips, allowing kids to leave the classroom to see and explore first-hand enriches the lessons they are studying.
U.S.A. Today reports on the benefits of frequent travel days:
Outside of the structure and confinement necessary at school, a child on an educational trip is free to literally delve deeply into whatever he is learning about. An archaeological dig, for example, provides the opportunity for a child to experience the sights, sounds and tactile experience of digging for and identifying fossils. Small day trips can have similar hands-on benefits. Your child may be able to decorate a cookie at a bakery excursion or milk a cow during a visit to a nearby farm.
And the more time families spend together traveling, the more they get to know each other’s interests and learning styles.
This teaches collaboration, flexibility, and teamwork – all-important skills for the adult world.
Traveling together also builds skills like compromise and patience. After all, our travel plans don’t always go as we anticipate.
Kids will learn how to adapt and accept things they cannot change, for example, when a day at the beach is rained out and new plans must be made.
Travel also teaches kids that they are not the “center of the universe,” as they may need to make adjustments to what they were anticipating doing that day, say if a sibling suddenly gets sick and that boat ride or day at the amusement park is canceled.
For adults and kids alike, perhaps the best part about travel is the anticipation.
Things won’t always go as planned and sometimes our expectations far exceed the actual travel experience.
But that is one of the great things about it – the excitement of doing something new, perhaps something unknown, is a feeling kids will always remember.
So if you like to travel and are able to do it often with your children as they grow, they will reap great rewards from the experience.
And maybe, just maybe, those grades will improve and they’ll actually look forward to school!
Do you enjoy traveling with your kids? What benefits have you seen in traveling as a family?
Leave us your comments.