Branson 2019

There are a lot of reason why I love that we homeschool. Here’s another. I gave the kids a project this year – to plan our fall vacation. I drew a circle on the map around St. Louis that represented how far we could drive in 4-5 hours. I told them we could go anywhere inside that circle (which included Chicago, KC, and Memphis), but I wanted them to pick a destination. And then, I showed them how to use Trip Advisor to research hotels, restaurants, and places of interest. I left it up to them to plan our entire family vacation, and they did not disappoint me.

They both discussed places they wanted to go, and places they wanted to eat. I think Josie spent more time putting together the actual itinerary, but they both did a good job of planning things out and putting together a budget for the whole trip. I took care of booking the hotel, but apart from that, they did everything else. I wanted them to learn what goes into planning a vacation and how much everything costs. So while we were on the trip, we kept all of our receipts (Josie was in charge of collecting them) and afterwards she added up all of our costs and figured out if we had stayed on budget. We were just about $100 over, which isn’t bad.

We got to see a lot of cool things (most of which we saw the last time we went to Branson, but they didn’t remember it, of course), and had a great time. Photos from the trip are now up in my photo album.