Travel Fridays!

One thing you should know about me is that I love to travel.  Thanks to my parents planning road trips for us every summer (my dad hated to fly), I have almost made it to all 50 states, a goal I have to hit before I am 30!  I have 8 left, only 5 after this summer's travels.  Also thanks to my adventurous husband, I have been lucky enough to travel abroad.  He taught in Hungary for a year while we were dating so I took every break I could to get over to Europe to visit.  I also spent 5 weeks in college in Australian schools and had a quick trip to Japan to visit a dear friend when her husband was stationed over there.  Needless to say, I am a traveler and enjoy every minute of it!

One thing I have learned about myself is when I travel, I learn so much.  Two summers ago after spending the summer backpacking through Europe I decided I needed to bring these travels into the classroom some how.  I started last school year with travel Fridays.  Every Friday we would "fly" to a new place, explore and get our passport stamped.  The kids LOVED it!!  We went all over the world.  We started every trip by flying the correct amount of time... I would countdown the hours it took and we would fly around the room until we landed in our destination.  Since last year was the first year I did it, it was quite a bit of work to research some countries and to put presentations together.  Thankfully in my old school I had a very diverse population and a lot of parents came in to talk about their countries and travels!

This year, since I had the basics under my belt, I tried to perfect it a bit more.... its still a work in progress, but I am happy with the organization of it this year.  About mid-year I decided to combine the five senses with our travel experiences.  So we talk about what we would see, hear, touch, smell and taste in each country.  I normally finish each country study with a quick activity.  This is a great Fun Friday activity that also promotes learning and the desire to explore!  My kids love when I talk about the countries I have gone to as well :)

I try to follow the same format each week as I update the ones from last year!  Check out this freebie on South Africa at my TPT store!

I am working on adding my other countries that we have visited to my TPT store!  Trust me, your kids will love exploring the world plus it ties in maps and continents!  This is great too if you have a diverse student population.

Happy Traveling!

Annie