How to use Deliberate Travel Kids workbooks
The free kids’ workbooks that we’re currently making are pretty easy to use. Just download the workbook onto a tablet, or print out a copy, give to your kids and go do some laundry.
Job done.
The workbooks are designed to distract and educate kids on their own during lockdown, to give their parents a break.
But it turns out there are two ways to use the DTK Workbooks. You can hand them off to your kids and forget all about them, or you can get involved too.
The purpose of DT Kids is to teach children about different parts of the world. Parts they may never have heard of, never been to and definitely aren’t travelling to right now. But this is a perfect time to get kids to think about the world, and the different ways people live. It’s especially pertinent now, when large parts of the world, no matter how different they are from each other, are sharing similar experiences in lockdown.
You can use the DTK Workbooks as a jumping off point for you and your kids to learn more about different places around the world. Take the England workbook for example. While we’ve covered some basics in the workbook, there’s so much more to learn, so many different activities that can teach your kids about England.
How about watching an English film, like Wallace & Gromit, Babe or the Railway Children? How about reading an English book with them, like The Tiger Who Came to Tea or anything by Janet & Allan Ahlberg?
You could bake crumpets or scones with them (including the obligatory argument over how best to pronounce ‘scone’). Teach your kids how to make a cup of Builder’s Tea (milk, 2 sugars please).
You could listen to the Beatles, learn about the Great Fire of London or take a digital tour through the British Museum. Even start to read Harry Potter together! Kids love to learn, and they especially love to explore new things with their parents. If the whole family is interested, and thinking about England, your kids will be automatically interested instead.
How to actually do it
“OK”, I hear you say… “that’s all very well for England, but I don’t know much about Iceland or Japan, or Brazil or Morocco. How am I supposed to guide my kids if I don’t know much myself?”
That’s where we come in. Although we strive for Deliberate Travel Workbooks to give an insight into a country, there’s only so much we can fit into 12-15 pages. We create a new guide each week so we have to work fast, and we’re constantly upset about how much stuff we have to leave out.
So we’ve come up with a few ways we can make sure that the kids (and parents) who are interested, can find educational content and activities easily.
If you haven’t already, join our mailing list. Not only will you get each new workbook delivered straight to your inbox as soon as it’s ready, you’ll also get access to a bunch of extras that we include with the mailing list. We include fun playlists, recipes we’ve found, links to awesome videos or recommendations for films and books suitable for kids.
If you’re looking for even MORE, think about liking our Facebook group. It’s set up specifically for parents looking for additional activities and educational content for their kids. We know it can be pretty tough to keep up the task of imagining new activities for your kids. So we’ll do some of that work for you.
For example, a recent post shared details of a beautiful Instagram account showing pictures of Japanese art. The images are beautiful to look at for kids anyway, but we’ve also included suggestions for different activities that kids can try, such as:
Ask children to make their own versions of old world Japanese prints, using whatever medium is available - pencil and paper, paints, watercolours even collage.
Pick a picture with a person in it and ask them to write a story about their life - how did they get there, what are they doing, what's their name?
Take two different pictures are ask kids to compare and contrast - what is the same and what's different? Perfect for helping children concentrate in small differences and focus on detail.
Looking forward to seeing more of you on our Facebook page and generating lots of new ideas for activities!