Part of our Series on Travelling With Kids
Embarking on a long trip with kids in the car, you know you’ll hear an unending chorus of, “Are we there yet?” Rather than get annoyed by this chant, we try to turn it into a learning experience (and cut down on the repetition) by responding—“Why don’t you check your map?”
We bought each of our kids a small United States atlas. Now they can keep track for themselves how close we are to our destination. We’ve tried to wrap travel into a real learning opportunity.
We teach our kids figure out how to interpret the maps, while enhancing their sense of direction and helping them to determine what town we might pass next. They also practice reading and the skills required to follow a route. Bonus- they keep themselves occupied and create their own fun.
You get the same effect by handing over old paper maps from AAA, free maps from rest stops, or maps provided by local tourism boards—with an added origami challenge of trying to fold it back up again. Bluey sometimes turns a big map into a tent that he drapes over his car seat!
In our tech driven world of GPS and Siri, many folks can’t read a map very well. We hope that our kids will be an exception to this trend. We’re interested in showing them where they are, where they’re going, and where they could get to next.
Life’s an adventure, bring your map!