family vacation – Creative Content

Yesterday, I had planned to prepare some YouTube short videos for the kids to watch about the Taj Mahal in India. But, my son picked an especially interesting dream destination for a family vacation. He picked Mars.

So, here is the list of 8 short and fascinating YouTube videos we picked for our travel adventure.

Every school day, we sit down together and watch 3 short YouTube videos (4 minutes long tops). I give the kids a list of 8 pre-screened and entertaining videos and then they choose their 3 favorite. We started doing this because we missed out on our family vacation to Maine. I figured we may not be able to leave the house during social distancing but we can experience traveling the world via the computer with YouTube. So far, we have looked at Orlando, the Pyramids, Tokyo, and now…..Mars.

Here is the list you can use too for your family. I really like these videos. They are fascinating, especially the NASA 2020 video. So cool.

Due to social distancing, we had to skip our family vacation to Maine. The kids started back to school online yesterday and along with that, I found some travel videos for them to watch.

We make a game out of this.

Ella and Drew pick one travel destination in the entire world and I find the videos beforehand. Each school day, I pick 6-8 really short YouTube videos that I pre-screen for entertainment and value. I filter them to make sure they are about 4 minutes or less long. I hand the kids a list of 6-8 videos and tell them that they only need to pick 3 of their own choice. Then, Ella and Drew sit down for 10-15 minutes a day and just watch 3 of the videos together to learn about that place.

Yesterday, they had chosen Orlando, Florida. Listed below are the 6 videos I found and the kids picked three of these videos to watch. They picked the Disney and Universal Studios ride videos, of course.

I have found with teenagers that it is much better to give them choices so that’s why I pick 6 and let them choose 3 only. And I limit this whole thing to about 10-15 minutes tops. I learned from the military a long time ago the acronym “KISS.” This means keep it short and sweet or as they say in the military with PowerPoint presentations, “Keep it Short, Stupid.” No one likes to sit through more than 15-20 minutes of video.

I’ll admit, my kids grumbled quite a bit at first but seemed to actually like the videos once they saw them. This was our “family vacation” experience Monday. Drew picked the Pyramids of Egypt for Tuesday.