Last year was a big year for us, we took our kids on a 3 month overseas holiday to Europe. A whole term out of school—and it didn’t hurt them one bit. In fact, the experience taught them so much more than they would have ever learned sitting in the classroom.
Without a doubt, school is very important. However, we are a family who love to travel and believe that family holidays and travel can also add to their learning experiences.
We lived in Italy many years before moving to Melbourne and planned to travel back for a month every year or two. But then there was the pandemic, which turned our worlds upside down. Finally, in 2023, we booked a Europe trip. Although the initial plan was for 6 weeks, we quickly realized that the end of term holidays meant the kids would only miss 9 weeks of school but we’d have 13 weeks away. It was decided that those extra few weeks would be better spent away than at home.
The kids and I went at the end of June and my husband joined us a month after.
I have my own business back in Melbourne and run a local travel website, Mum’s Little Explorers, where I publish kids activities in Melbourne and family travel ideas. However, I was able to continue from overseas with some help from my small team.
After getting over the jetlag and catching up with family, we enrolled the kids in Italian Summer Camp for a couple of weeks.It isn’t anything like Australian holiday camps. The kids spent their days in a beach resort, swimming in the pool, playing sports, hanging at the beach and eating 3-course, amazing Italian meals. They didn’t know anyone on arrival, but finished up with lots of friends. The best part of it all was that they were fully immersed in the Italian language.
Once my husband arrived, we moved into an apartment on the beach for the month of August. We generally did this when we lived there, and it has always been a great way to spend the summer together. Other than a few day trips, we spent every day on the beach. We would walk across in the morning to our umbrella and spend the morning swimming and paddleboarding. At lunch time we would either head back to our apartment for lunch or eat at one of the local restaurants on the beach. An afternoon siesta was a must because of all of the late nights, and then the kids would write in their journals before returning to the beach again.
We bought Italian books from the local bookshop. They played with Italian cards and learned to play a range of card games. Every afternoon we’d sit on the beach while all of the kids met to play a game of soccer—at least 20 kids of all ages. They played until sunset, when we would get ready for dinner and head out for the night. In August there are summer festivities during the evenings, and the coastal towns really come alive.
September came and it was time to explore. We took this time out to see a bit of Italy and teach the kids a bit of history. Along with city tours and other activities, our highlights were riding a gondola in Venice, visiting the duomo in Florence, seeing the leaning tower of Pisa and having a tour of the Colosseum in Rome. We also took a week-long Med that included Croatia and the Greek Islands.
The kids learned more in that time than they ever would have in a history class in school because they got to see things up close, in person. When they do eventually learn about these places in school, they’ll have their memories and experiences to enhance their knowledge.
We spent the last week staying with family and saying our goodbyes. Three months flew by so quickly! When the kids got back to school, everything was back to normal. They settled into their routines, and because term 4 is usually spent revising things they’ve learned during the year, they really didn’t miss much.
While we were away, they still did their reading every day. They did their writing by completing journals about their trip. They got to practice their Italian and be immersed in the culture. And, most importantly, they got to spend time with family they had missed for so long.
While we can’t do this every year, we are excited to be planning our next trip. We know that once they are in high school it will be much more difficult to plan family trips—plus, they might not want to leave their friends to come with us! So, we will take advantage while we can, and travel while they are young making memories that will last us a lifetime.
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