Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Travel Tuesdays: Trip Planning, Part 2

Once we choose a location for a trip, I begin doing a little research with our kids. I start at our local library's on-line catalog. After arriving at the website, I simply enter one of our library card numbers (or our alternate ID) and pin number. Then I can search for books, CDs, magazines, etc. to my heart's content. If you live in the US, you likely have the same service at your library. If you haven't used it, you're really missing out!

From the comfort of my own home, I can search my local library's complete catalog and the catalogs of the other libraries in our library system (Which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 libraries). If I find a book I want in another library, I simply click the "Place Hold" button. That book will usually arrive at my local library in a matter of days (Some take longer).

Here are a few titles I reserved for the kids last night:

A crafty one especially for my crafty daughter
A graphic style that will appeal to my son
A shorter non-fiction for my Kindergarten daughter
And a longer one to appeal to my 4th grade son.


Of course, globes and atlases will also feature heavily in our reading. We own several we like, though I recently read about this one from Barefoot Books that looks wonderful. 




(An aside: If you're not familiar with Barefoot Books, please visit their website. They produce lovely books).

What children's books about Italy have you enjoyed? Do you have any titles to recommend to us? How do you help your children learn about the places they'll visit?


Related posts:
Travel Tuesdays: Trip Planning
Travel Tuesdays: Top 10 Tips for Traveling with Children
Travel Tuesdays: Affording to Travel

6 comments:

  1. There were some new ones for me here. thank you. I did series of vacation posts last summer, so I am posting a link to my Italian one :)
    http://joannamarple.com/?p=1382

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  2. Joanna,
    I haven't read any of them yet, so I can't comment on their quality. (Though I am very familiar with the Barefoot Books catalog and trust I'll love the atlas). I just placed the library holds. I look forward to digging into them with my kids. I'm especially intrigued by The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily.
    Thanks for sharing your list. We'll look for those, too.

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  3. When my kids were young and we'd go to New York City, we'd turn to the collection at the library to prepare with travel books, but also fiction. It always got us in the zone for the trip. An early favorite was the simple ABC NYC book, and we'd come home and see how many of the letters we had seen in our travels.

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  4. MotherReader,
    I love to read fiction of the place, too. I just read "You, Me" by Erri De Luca(adult novella) set on the islands off Italy to get in the mood. I'm looking for some good fiction for the kids.

    Suggestions anyone?

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  5. A man who has been in another world does not come back unchanged. One can't put the difference into words. When the man is a friend it may become painful: the old footing is not easy to recover.

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    1. Oh, this is so true! I felt that way when I came home from the Philippines. I returned a changed person while my peers had remained in the same school in the same town.

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