Virtual Travel Activities to Try With Your Kids

If you’re anything like me, you’re hungry to travel. You might be getting tempting offers from airlines (“Fly around the world for 27 cents!). And you may be eager to make up for last year’s canceled plans.

And, I’ve found that teaching my own kids about the world is more important than ever. The problems we face today and tomorrow will require a new generation of compassionate, persistent, creative critical thinkers who understand their connection to the larger world.

But tacking on even more hours of academics to your kids’ Zoom-filled schedules is no fun for anyone. That’s why I wrote a book called Virtual Travel Activities for Kids. I’ve picked out some of our family’s favorites here. Just choose a country your family wants to learn about and match it with any activity below. You can repeat or tweak the activities for different countries, over and over again. So, until it’s safe to sate your wanderlust in person, go ahead and explore from home. Bon voyage!

Find the extremes

Learn about an extreme place in a country — the hottest, highest, or other -est spot. Then write a script and record a commercial encouraging people to visit that place. (This gets really silly when you pick a place that would not be a great tourism spot, such as the inside of a volcano or a deep-sea trench!) What should visitors wear, bring or do there? Why should they plan a trip there?

Hunt for sounds

Look through the easy-to-navigate Cities and Memory site (citiesandmemories.com). Can you find recordings from different areas of the country? How do they differ? Do your best to pinpoint on a map where the recordings were made and identify what’s making the sounds — monkeys, waves, a dump truck?
Next, create a sound map of your neighborhood or house, making it with the sounds you hear. Choose a symbol for each kind of sound (lawnmower, birdsong, humming of appliances) and create a key so someone else could read the map, too.

Get into art

Take a virtual tour of an art museum in your chosen country and pick a piece of art that depicts a landscape, city or landmark there. Compare it to a photograph or video of that place. What’s similar? What’s different? Paint or draw your own version.

Visit the home of your ancestors

Where did some of your ancestors live? Imagine you were in their town or country. Where would you want to visit? Mark the locations on a map. Explore these sites through videos, virtual tours, satellite and street views on Google Maps. To find photos, search “[name of place] historical photos.”

Put together a scrapbook about your trip. You can print photos of the places, write notes about what you did and learned, and even make your own tickets, receipts or other bits of “evidence” of the adventure.

Go on a scavenger hunt

Download and print the scavenger hunt at ToAndFroFam.com/virtual, or make one of your own with open-ended clues (such as “surprising” or “huge”). Your kids will follow their curiosity by seeking out videos, books, news sites and the like about their chosen country. As they explore, they’ll find places, people or facts that answer their scavenger hunt clues.

Compete in Olympic sports

Start by making uniforms or bibs for your team that will represent your chosen country. Then pick three sports to compete in — perhaps selecting your country’s specialties. Enlist the whole family to play. You might need to adapt the games: Use a hockey puck over clean wood floors for curling, for example. Consider if there’s something about this country’s geography, climate or culture that might influence its residents’ skill in a certain sport.

When you’re done, play the Olympics theme song and parade around your yard or block, holding flashlights ringed in tissue paper for an Olympic torch stand-in. Finally, sing country’s national anthem and award each other medals you made out of jar lids, ribbon and other decorations.

Return to any of these activities as often as you like to “visit” more countries around the world. Enjoy the journey!