Educational Activities

[AnnMarie3]

I am leaving next Tuesday(YEAH)! with my ds, age 6 and in Kindergarten. We are travelling with two friends of mine and their ds's-ages 4,5, and 8. I am looking for ideas on some educational activites. So far I have come up a Disney word search and an ABC's of Disney book that we will do. I would welcome any other ideas. We will also get the kids passports at Epcot. Thanks for your ideas. 7 more days to go!

Ann marie

 

[texmom]

Welcome Ann Marie! I hope you have an awesome trip!

I'm trying to remember what we did with our kids last year. One thing we are doing this year is my 9 year old will be doing a Santas Around the World project. He will be interviewing the CM's in each country about Christmas traditions in their homeland. You could adapt this to any other topic that your kids are interested in as well.

The kids' teachers always like them to take pictures and make a scrapbook when we get home, that uses cataloging, writing and sequencing skills.

My 6 year old DD loves to keep records of everything(she even put a sheet of paper on our bathroom door with instructions to check each time we visit LOL) so I will have her keep a journal of fave moments/worst moments each day.etc.

I think, however, that the most important educational activities come under the heading of relationship/social skills. We work VERY hard with our kids before and during each trip on being patient in frustrating situations, being polite and respectful of others, shrugging off minor inconvieniences and annoyances, being tolerant, etc. It is so hard for children to handle those kinds of situations and those skills will be helpful and important for their entire life. So even if you do nothing else, a trip is educational in that regard.

Our motto during our last trip was "No Grumpies!" whenever someone started getting upset, me included, someone would say that and it would be a reminder to take a minute and reassess.

Good luck and I hope you have a great trip!

 

[nkjzmom]

Those are some great ideas!! Ann Marie, I hope you all have a great time. We are leaving Friday for a wedding and will be at WDW Sunday and Monday. Can't wait!

I will add just a few activities that we have done with our children (8, 5, 3, 1). These are mostly for the older ones, obviously....we bought the guide for kids and DS and DD read through it and made lists of which rides/attractions they wanted to go on. They could read the maps, rate the rides, write down thoughts/ideas, etc. We also gave them Disney Dollars to budget with, so that covered some math skills.

It's a great idea to give them the disposable cameras...or if you don't mind, let them use the digital camera! Not only for journaling purposes...but just to see what they thought interesting enough to take a picture of. My 5 year old's pictures of the castle were better than some of ours!

I like the social skills aspect Texmom. We do the same with our children. While eating we prompt each other with the words "Best Manners" and that generally helps us all behave and use our "please" and "thank-yous".

Have fun...and find a place to put some LIME GREEN...so you can be spotted by all the other DISers!!

 

[AnnMarie3]

Thanks for your great suggestions! Those are really good ideas. I will get my ds a disposable camera for sure. I'm a scrapbooker, and was planning on helping him make a book. I hadn't thought about actually letting ds take the pictures himself! Thanks to everyone!

Ann marie

 

[mom2nickntink]

If you look on Disneydollarless.com on the left side of the page towards the bottom is a REALLY GOOD journal you can print out for each park.

It asks educationaL as well as fun facts about each park and their day.