Fun Family ‘Travel’ Ideas Without Leaving Town

The kids are back in school and things are settling down. Although Summer travel and adventure has come to an end, there are many ways you can ‘travel” to new places with your family without leaving town this Fall. Let's take a look at a few.

AT THE DINNER TABLE

Are you bored with sitting around the family dinner table with the same Friday night meal? Do you want to have creative, interactive dialogue around the dinner table that your kids will engage in? A great way to solve this problem is to take your family on a journey to different countries through cuisine.

Change up your mundane routine by eating out at an ethnic restaurant. According to Peri’s Spice Ladle, taking your kids to restaurants with distinctive culture can create numerous opportunities for you to talk and educate them about different cultures. This can be a great learning experience for not only for your kids, but for you too!

If eating out is too expensive, find easy ethnic recipes to prepare at home with your kids. This is a great opportunity to introduce foods from places that you hope to visit when school’s out.

IT'S GAME DAY

Fall is a sports lover favorite time of the year. Most professional sporting events are too expensive for the average family to attend together. So why not create a stadium-like experience with a twist in your own home!

Use game day as an opportunity to teach your kids about geography and culture. What state or country does the teams playing represent? Have snacks that represent those areas. Pull out a map so the kids can track how far the teams traveled to compete. Quiz them on landmarks or monuments that are featured on the TV screen as the game breaks for commercial. Find creative ways to talk about the history of the team and how it connects to the local culture.

These activities will provide family members who aren’t into sports an opportunity to engage in conversations about places, people and culture. You may even discover a destination to add to your family travel bucket list.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR

You and your family are looking for something unique to do. Should you just go back home just to be trapped inside Netflix or Hulu? Surely not…you don’t have to! Try volunteering in your local community. Wouldn’t that be interesting with your little ones? Volunteering in a local center can improve your joy and your family’s level of gratitude. You can meet real needs, meet a lot of people with servant’s heart in your region (fantastic evangelistic opportunities), and foster the habit of serving others.

When we focus too much on self-fulfilling activities that bring us joy, it is easy for us to forget that there are others who lack the joy that we naturally have through God. Kids are more beneficial to the community than we think they are. They can help with local gardening clubs, animal-rescue organizations, or retirement homes in the area.

Elderly people love having visitors, especially kids. Many of them have personal stories to share about their family, places where they have lived and visited and things they have experienced. In the wise words of Andy Rooney, “The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.”

Happy Travels!