Montessori Vacations for Elementary-Aged Children

When Henry attended private school at Austin Montessori School (before we opened a public Montessori school in East Austin), I remember listening to a presentation about how to build a love of reading in children. Unexpectedly, the conversation veered into the concept of Montessori vacations. They didn’t name it that, exactly, but bear with me.

The presenter shared a story about a family that had been reading about wild horses in North Carolina. They then planned an entire trip to search for the horses in real life. That concept stuck with me! I think it’s so amazing to explore learning in a fun and self-directed way.

Now that my boys are both almost elementary-aged, I’ve been thinking more about how to plan Montessori vacations. We haven’t read anything lately that inspires a particular location. However, I decided to try and make our next vacation as Montessori as possible.

Montessori Vacations: New York

We’ll be heading to New York City for a day and then heading into upstate New York. We have a full day of adventures planned in New York City! We will go to places connected to things the boys have enjoyed learning about. For example, we’ll be heading to the Statue of Liberty and the Houdini Museum.

In preparation for the trip, I ordered a bunch of books from the library so we can learn all we can about the Statue of Liberty and Houdini before we go.

I also made some coloring pages and open-ended boxes to help the boys catalogue our journey as we go.

I feel like spending time reading books in the weeks leading up to our vacation will make our vacation even more fun. Or maybe that just works for me because I’m a planner! I get so exciting thinking about and preparing for vacations. And then I enjoy going on them! #doublethefun