Here are some simple ways to include education in your summer vacation.

• Enlist the services of your junior travel agent.
  Why not include your child as your junior travel agent in the trip planning? He can learn how to compare costs of airplane flights or rental car companies and do research about the places you plan to visit on the Internet or in books at the library. Teach him how to use a map to find cities and tourist attractions in the places you plan to visit. If you are traveling out of state, look up information about the state, such as the state flower, state bird and interesting attractions. Have your child write to the state tourism bureau to ask for information.


• Make reading part of your vacation.
  Reading helps to prepare your child for the trip and to pass the time while on board and when waiting for trains and airplanes. Are you going to Idaho, Pennsylvania or a foreign country? Go to the library or your favorite bookstore to find a tour book, and read a story or novel that takes place in the spot you plan to visit. If you are going to a foreign country, start to learn common phrases in that country's language.


• Get out the maps and globes.
  Work with your child to locate where you are going on a map or globe. Measure the distance between traveling points in inches and then translate into miles.


• Incorporate what they've learned and what they will learn.
  Did your child study the Civil War or the American Revolution last year? What will she be studying next year? Try to incorporate visits to the battlefields of Gettysburg, the Freedom Trail in Boston or other places she's studied or will study in your vacation plan.


• Learn how things are made.
  Wherever you are traveling to, seek out factories that have tours so children can learn how things are made. For example, in San Francisco, you can visit a teddy bear factory; in Arkansas, a glass blowing studio; and in Hawaii, a macadamia nut factory.


• Take a museum treasure hunt.
  When visiting a museum, head first to the museum gift shop. Allow your child to purchase five or more postcards of works of art on display in the museum. With postcards in hand, find the works of art in the museum and then have your child write something about the work on the back of the postcard, using these questions as a guide:
  
  
  1. Were the colors vivid?
  2. What was the artist trying to say?
  3. How did you feel when you saw this work of art?




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