About
Here you can find information about how Deliberate Travel Kids came into existence, our core values and some FAQs
Our core values
We set up DTK because we could see problems in lots of kids’ content, particularly content about the world.
It’s often dull, static and basic. We believe that kids’ content should be dynamic, exciting, active and fun while also being educational, accurate and responsible.
We have some core values we try to abide by every time we create a workbook. You can read about them in more detail in our blog post about them
Our goal is to light the spark, so kids want to learn more
Light the spark We can’t teach kids everything about a country. Our goal is to spark their interest, so they go out into the world and find out more
Every country is worth learning about We refuse to focus on just the well known countries. We get lots of requests for ‘familiar’ countries but we’re determined to make sure we cover a range of continents and cultures
Cultivate ‘why?’ not ‘because’ Our goal is to get kids questioning, not coming up with correct answers. If they see a behaviour or activity they don’t understand, it’s always an opportunity to learn more
Active learning not passive reading Kids already do plenty of passive learning, with reading, worksheets or busy work. We use activities, puzzles and research tasks to get kids focused and developing skills
It’s all about detail No kid wants to know what date Henry VIII died, but they do want to hear about how Anne Boleyn probably had 6 fingers on one hand. Detail is way more fun than dates
Research skills are crucial for independent, resilient learners
Research skills are crucial Research skills are crucial for creating independent, resilient learners. Every single workbook involves multiple research tasks
We all need to learn difficult history We don’t shy away from talking about difficult issues that crop up in history, like slavery, serfdom, wars and more. We strongly believe that children are capable of understanding anything, provided that it’s talked about in age-appropriate language.
We’re Joram and Laura
We’re a Dutch-English couple living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
We came up with the idea for Deliberate Travel a while ago, but originally intended to focus on creating guides for adults.
Then….COVID-19 happened.
Joram lost his job, and the travel industry basically collapsed, making setting up a travel guide company a tricky prospect. Instead we decided to spend the time inside helping the best way we know how - teaching kids about the world.
Joram
Joram is Dutch and works in the field of innovation. He’s lived in the US and the UK and speaks almost perfect English. He was a child-teenage-young adult athlete and spent a lot of time teaching kids to find sports enjoyable.
He met Laura in Mongolia after driving there from Amsterdam.
Laura
Laura is English (and hopefully soon Irish). She works as an educational consultant and learning designer for businesses and universities. She’s lived in Turkey, Lebanon and Serbia. She doesn’t speak perfect Dutch (but it’s not bad).
She met Joram in Mongolia after driving there from London.