Adding education into a fun summer road trip isn’t hard, as long as you do a little bit of planning ahead of time. There are many ways to make education fun while traveling or to sneak a really educational experience into a road trip for the kids. The key is to make sure that above all the trip is still a trip and a lot of fun, and if you follow a few basic pieces of advice and think creatively, this won’t be hard to pull off. Get your motorhome rental ready and read on to have a fun, educational, summer road trip.

Start with the Planning Stage

There are many different ways to make learning on the road fun, and with tablets and e-book readers on hand, planning is one of the places to start. Where are you going? What type of games can you create to encourage the kids to look up interesting facts about a town? Is there a competition to see who can come up with a piece of trivia or the strangest fact of a place you’re passing through?

These are all great options that can help turn focus to the places you’re at and going through, as well as fostering a natural curiosity for travel, history, and the culture and tradition of other places.]

Remember:

• Make a game of it
• Have a reward system for playing/winning
• Ask for weird history or facts about each place
• Find the weird/wild places they would enjoy stopping at & learning about
• Look up interesting or weird facts to share ahead of time – prime the pump before checking a place out more quickly

Choose great locations

Great locations make a difference. There are many incredible places to add to a summer road trip that lend themselves to education with very little need for help in addition to being fun or interesting.

Gettysburg Pennsylvania – The museum is incredible enough but the real gem for burning off energy is the ability to go out to various parts of the field, hike the trails, take a look from the top of the watchtower – it’s an incredible experience for the bookish or the outdoor energetic alike with or without the guided tours. Seeing the battlefield first hand really brings everything to life.

Philadelphia or Boston – If you’re going to be spending a lot of time in an East Coast city, these two provide plenty of options. Focus on the Founding Fathers, early history of the country, and take a look at some of the historical landmarks in the area that can lead to a discussion on history, Civics, or even details like how different times were. See how this piques the interest and go from there or hit up some of the incredible museums.

National Parks

National parks might seem like an easy cop out, but this is an easy way to bring in education. History of the area and the wildlife, biology, environmental sciences, looking at maps and talking about geography, there are so many ways that national parks can go hand in hand with sneaking in education. This even ties into nature, getting fresh air, and being completely immersed in the experience of being out in the wild and seeing a very different setting than their everyday life is set in.