Family holidays: Fun or Learning, or Both?

With parents under increasing pressure not to take their kids out of school in term-time, discussion about what family holidays should be all about has stepped up of late. For many people, family breaks are for pure relaxation away from the heat of the classroom and the growing stresses placed on our children by tests and exams. For others, they are a way of teaching kids more about the world they live in and of bringing the National Curriculum to life, whether it be speaking Spanish or learning about the Ancient Egyptians. (Looking at it cynically, giving your holiday an educational justification may well increase your chances of getting the okay for a term-time trip from your head teacher…).

Of course, it’s possible to tread a fine line between the extremes. A beach holiday is all very well, but there are few destinations that don’t also offer the scope for cultural or nature-based excursions, whether it be Roman ruins to explore or whale-spotting trips. We recently ran a feature on holidays with an educational aspect, with suggestions running from everything from lambing and scarecrow-building to exploring ancient Petra and dining with Bedouin in Jordan, learning survival skills at a bush camp in Kenya, or picking up the principles of Ashanti drumming in Ghana.

If you approach it with the right attitude of openness and imagination – the main mindset, surely, that we should be trying to instil in our children – the world is in fact one big outdoor classroom. And whether your school chooses to be strictly against or to turn a blind eye to term-time absences, it’s virtually impossible, unless you go to an all-inclusive five-star resort totally divorced from its surroundings, not to learn at least a few things on holiday.

On the other hand, many parents – especially those of younger children – fall in to the trap of only opting for activities they think will appeal to their kids, in doing so ‘dumbing down’ their holidays and depriving their family of the opportunity to discover new interests. Again, it’s a matter of expectations and approaching things with the right attitude. Drag your kids to the Louvre without having looked into what may be of interest to them is a surefire route to disaster; investigating the museum’s website first for details of family trails and child-oriented tours, as well as going armed with paper and pens to get your children engaged with the artworks, will have everyone engrossed.

It’s important to approach a family holiday as a compromise situation where not everyone can be happy 100% of the time but where everyone gets to do what they want for at least some of the time. One strategy that works for many people is ‘a day for you, a day or us’, or alternating activities for kids and parents. That way, no one feels cheated and everyone has something to look forward to and to look back on. On a recent trip to the South of France, for instance, we visited several art galleries, using the techniques mentioned above to get the kids involved, but we followed each trip with something specifically for the kids – the beach, a carousel ride, a visit to the aquarium. Another time, we played hookie from school to go to Disneyland Paris but also took the kids to explore the chateaux of the Loire, learn about Leonardo da Vinci and his inventions at his former home the Clos Lucé, and discover various museums in Paris. The result was that everyone came home refreshed and happy.

See also our feature Absent-minded Holidays.