The other day my six year old daughter asked me, “Daddy, when we travel around the world, can we go to Sydney, Australia?”
Hearing Sydney ask this really blew me away. Sure, we have been planning a round the world trip for awhile now, but I was never really sure if she actually understood the magnitude of this trip. This will not be a one or two week vacation where we go back to our same house, school, and jobs when it’s over. It will be a two year adventure constantly moving from place to place with an unknown future; and she gets it. She’s excited and has her own wish list of places to visit. She also informed me that she does not want to go to Africa because she does not want to be eaten by a lion. Smart girl!
We already have a rough itinerary of the places we plan to visit. With only one year left until we place our house up for sale, it is time to get down to business and come up with a more detailed plan. Even though Sydney is only six years old, we now feel that she is fully capable of helping in the planning process on where to go. We will be traveling as a family, so it only makes sense to plan as a family.
Now for the tricky part. We need to figure out how we can have her help us research the different places around the world that we may want to go to. We love to watch travel shows, such as Globetrekker and Rick Steves. It gives us ideas on where to go and what to do, and they are entertaining. But, Sydney finds them “boring” to watch. She would much rather watch Curious George or a kid’s movie. But she loves books. So, it only makes sense to start checking out kid’s books from the library with an emphasis on travel, geography, history, and different cultures and read them to her every night while discussing it in regards to our trip. Another useful tool we are planning to try is to buy a world map and show her where the different places are located in the world and marking where we want to go. Will this work? Only time will tell. So, if anyone has any suggestions, we would love to hear them.
We, like you, try to involve our children if for no other reason then to be excited about the places we will visit. We have found a series from the library called Cultures of the World. The text is a little advanced for our boys (3 and 5) but if is full of great pictures of people and places. As we read them we skim the text and tell the boys the highlights in a conversational tone. It has also helped that my husband and I have traveled pre-kids so we show them our pictures and tell them our stories. I have also found that having a huge world map on my son’s bedroom wall has helped him enormously with his geography. He will have no problem showing me where China or Thailand are! I have been reading a lot of travel blogs lately and I call the boys over when there is an interesting picture of a place we will visit. I think it is so important to get them excited and even familiar with the trip so it won’t be as much as a shock to the system when we leave.
We need to get a huge world map. And not just for our daughter, but for us too!!!