Ways to travel the world with your children.

Without leaving the house.

In a recent survey by Good Housekeeping, the biggest dream across all age groups is to travel more. Responses about self-improvement tie in with this as people liked the idea of learning a new language as their chosen skill. I always imagine winning the lottery and splitting the money between home improvements and then travelling the world.

My son sparked my interest in travel. He can name almost every flag of the world - true fact! You can also show him a map of the world and ask him to find a country and he can point it out no problem. We aren’t quite sure where this skill (talent?) has come from as I am pretty rubbish at my flags but I do try to learn from him. He is also a dab hand at Duolingo, which again, we can only encourage. If he isn’t telling me about the latest slide tackle in football, he is asking if I know how to say “bread” in Polish. (No, I do not.)

But one of the biggest barriers to travel is of course money. So sometimes we need to be a little creative with how we learn about the world and the ways in which we travel.

Below are a few ideas of ways you can “travel the world” without leaving the house:

Photo by Amy Humphries on Unsplash

Mouse Postcards

I stumbled across this whilst researching another project. It was actually a blog post about how this American lady has a Christmas Mouse instead of doing Elf on the Shelf. The mouse isn’t naughty like the elf, but he does set tasks that need to be done the following day. It is very cute. However, I did read that the mouse then goes on holiday for the rest of year and sends postcards from his travels around America. (Of course the mum writes these and posts them to their address. Her children mustn’t be old enough to look post stamps.)

I thought this would be a fun way for children to learn about the world. A quick Google and I found you can buy all sorts of postcards from around the world on Etsy. You could have a toy mouse who goes on his (or her) travels and sends postcards from all the different destinations! I think I might do this over the summer for my girls as they are young enough to find this exciting. I imagine each postcard could include a cool fact about the country…

Map Drawing

If you have a globe or big wall map, you could try copying the outline of each country and get the kids to colour in different countries. They could draw animals on the map to show where in the world they live.

You can get some cool map pictures (again from Etsy) that explore different symbols, animals and points of interest from around the world.

Meals from Around the World

A while ago we began the tradition of every Saturday night we had a meal from another country. We started off easy with Italy and homemade pizzas, but also explored Greece, Spain, Japan, France, China, Mexico and America. Basically, all my favourite takeaways 😉 but we did try and cook these all at home. Still on the list is Poland (any suggestions please send my way!) and Turkey.

As well as eating the food, we listened to music that we imagined would be playing in the restaurants from that country.

Themed Afternoons

This one brings back all the lockdown memories, as we searched for ways to entertain ourselves at home while homeschooling.

We had days dedicated to a country, pretended to board an aeroplane using the sofa cushions and had a go at speaking the language. We don’t seem to do things like this as much any more, I guess we had more spare time then, but it was very fun. We even got our passports out to make it more realistic - up to you whether you want to risk this or not!

So until the time comes to have an adventure further afield, hopefully this will keep you inspired a little bit until then.

I have started using Skyscanner, Roam2Rio, Airbnb and Booking.com to explore different options for travelling on a budget. I am currently researching a Eurocamp on Lake Garda for next summer; there are many different ways of booking this and I am hoping it will be an affordable way for a family of five to visit Italy!