How to plan an educational day out (with kids!) for the Easter Holidays
School holidays are a time when many parents are looking for places to take their kids and activities to entertain them. While some days out are purely for entertainment, other trips have a more educational focus. Visiting museums, art galleries, science exhibits or historical locations can be fantastic ways to make learning real for kids. And considering that the number of school trips is declining rapidly, it may be your child’s best opportunity.
Remember, educational days out don’t have to be museums - you could try an escape room, a cooking class for kids or a cycle tour past historical monuments.
However, planning an educational trip can be overwhelming, not just from a logistical perspective, but also from an educational one. The more freedom you choose, the more organization for parents!
Here are our top tips for planning a great (and educational!) day out with kids. With a little prep work before and after, there are some great ways to make the day memorable for all!
Give kids a choice
Getting kids to participate in deciding where to go can be a great way to get them enthusiastic about a trip. For younger children you can offer a range of choices, and older kids can be sent off to do some research on their own.
Encourage them to search for “educational day trip + [county or town]” and see what comes up. Here are some lists of different educational days out in major UK cities.
Do some kid-friendly research
Most places like museums, libraries or National Trust properties have a child-friendly section to their website these days, like this one at the Natural History Museum. They’re a great way for kids to research what they want to see when visiting different places.
Help them make a list of all the things they want to see within a museum or an exhibition. Kids can also make a basic timetable for the day - what time they’ll get up, how long the journey will take, which things they’ll see first and where they’ll go for lunch.
For children who have difficulties with transitions, including some children on the Autism spectrum, this can be particularly helpful, as it gives them a framework to understand a change in routine. It can be helpful to warn kids that sometimes things don’t run to plan though - sometimes trains are delayed or there are big clues, so the routine that you make is just an outline not a strict timetable.
Plan an activity
Active learning is a great way to keep kids focused, and learning. It essentially refers to learning which does more than passively receiving information - like listening or reading. Solving problems, discussing issues and completing activities that require research and critical thought are all great ways to ensure kids are genuinely understanding as well as retaining information.
Although we tend to think of museums as ‘places to look at things’ there are plenty of ways to get kids mentally active.
Keep a diary
Give kids a notepad and get them to keep a diary of the day. They can record what they saw, what they liked, what they didn’t like. Give them quiet spaces during the day (waiting for lunch to be ready, on the train home) to write down their notes. If you’re feeling really active, you can write a list of prompts in the notebook - “What object do you think was the most useful?” “How do you think that museum could be better?” - to really get them thinking.
You can always glue in bits and pieces, like maps and little souvenirs later, to turn the diary into a scrapbook.
Do some sketching
Give kids a sketchpad and ask them to draw their favourite object, scene or person. For younger kids, colouring-in pages are a good substitute. Museums and art galleries are a great place for kids to sit down and do some quiet work.
Complete a scavenger hunt
Some museums have activities for children to complete in the museum, like scavenger or treasure hunts or even full on treasure hunts. Check the website of the place you’re visiting to see if there are any resources for kids. You can also use a more standard template for any museum, like the one here.
If you’re really looking to go all out, there are organizations like THATMuse which organize child-friendly treasure hunts around big museums.
Take advantage of free materials
Like we’ve said before, lots of places have a wealth of child friendly learning materials on their websites. Often these take the form of downloadable, printable sheets. Why not make up a learning pack before you set off to travel? Grab a folder per child for the printables and don’t forget pencils or pens.
You can often get hold of a printed copy of a floor plan or map of the building as well, which is a great way for kids to feel ownership over their learning.
And don’t forget to check other forms of media as well! Tate Kids has a great YouTube channel explaining all types of artistic movements, from Cubism to the Impressionists. There are some great podcasts as well, including the History of the World in 100 Objects (if you’re going to the British Museum).
Photo by Cátia Matos from Pexels
Have plenty of conversations afterwards
There are lots of things to talk about after you’ve visited a historical or cultural site.
Don’t be afraid of not knowing things! If a child asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, it can sometimes be a trigger for parents to shut the conversation down. Try acknowledging that you don’t know, or just copy a teacher friend of mine and try “Let’s Google it together!”.
Encourage kids to share with other people as well. Ring up Nana or Auntie Pauline and get kids to tell them about their day. Although it seems basic, putting experiences into words is a key educational skill for children.
Take snacks and incorporate outdoor time
Learning is hard work, so kids need regular infusions of snacks and time to run around to blow off steam. Children can’t screen or prioritize information (ignoring the unimportant stuff) in the same way as adults can, so can get overwhelmed easily by all the new stimuli.
Depending on the child, you may need to incorporate some quiet reflection time, or some ‘running around like a crazy person’ time to recover. For children who are sensitive to noise or stimuli, headphones can be a great tool in large, crowded spaces like museums.