Page 8 | Could your 10yo do this school assignment?

HerRoyalNotness · 2021-01-15T12:44:10+00:00

I had an email to say they were missing an assignment from Monday, so I had a look at what it was. They’d been talking about and I thought they were on top of it. They had to plan a trip overseas for three days with a budget of $20k. The information they needed to include was: Destination Flight and costs Why you chose destination Hotel and cost Amenities at hotel 3 days of 3 meals naming a restaurant, meal choice and cost incl drinks 3 days of 3 activities per day naming activity, cost per person and total Total cost overall. It’s for maths. YABU - yes my 10yo could complete that YANBU - no, they’d need a lot of help/guidance.

XingMing · 15/01/2021 15:50

I used a similar project for a Y8 group, to plan a weekend away. Gave them a huge pile of holiday brochures and told them to explain in a short PowerPoint where they were going, what accommodation they were staying in, and two or three activities/excursions they'd do while there, with a budget of about £500 per person. All the boys went to see big football games in Rome or Barcelona, and the girls went for spas and beach resorts. They enjoyed it, did the maths, and learned a bit about geography and organising travel plans, plus some IT practice. As a lesson plan with homework, it was golden.

Lockdownbear · 15/01/2021 15:51

@BabyofMine

I don’t know if it’s reasonable, but I think it’s a pretty fucking insensitive assignment when children will likely have no holiday to plan for a very long time.

That's what I was thinking, Also $20k is a heck of a large budget for a 3 day trip. $20k could well be an annual salary.

Astrabelle · 15/01/2021 15:59

@AdaColeman

There's many a 40 year old husband couldn't do that without help from his wife!

Hear hear!!

TiersForFears1 · 15/01/2021 15:59

It depends on the child. My 8 year old dd has done a similar task. She also created a pamphlet to accompany the assignment. I was very impressed, not sure if I’d be able to do that at her age!

XingMing · 15/01/2021 16:01

I think it was probably intended as something to dream happy about Lockdownbear. Although I see your point, you sound a bit curmudgeonly!!

Lockdownshmockdown · 15/01/2021 16:17

I despise assignments like this. They do them in class. The kids are sent off with an iPad and actually google holiday destinations, flights, hotels, holiday insurance, restaurants etc. etc. The class were all aged 9/10.

It's all part of the move towards skills based curriculums rather than (what's now seen as old-fashioned) knowledge based curriculums. . I'm not keen.

StormTreader · 15/01/2021 16:22

I think it's a fantastic project - it's one where the actual outcome of did you do it all successfully is fairly irrelevant because the ACTUAL outcome of the project is how to take a big problem and break it down into smaller bits, and then work through each bit while taking account that the whole thing as a unit also needs to work (be in budget).

Its such an important life and work skill in so many ways, and is a really important one for when you get to maths problems like "solve this equation" as well as things like "if you buy that expensive phone then you won't have enough for this months rent".

It's also a good lesson in "the first google result isnt necessarily the one you want", and "copy and pasting from wikipedia is not the same as understanding the content".

GhoulWithADragonTattoo · 15/01/2021 16:35

I’ve just read this to my 10 year old and he thinks he would be able to do it and would plan a trip to Ireland. I think you need to get him started with the right sort of websites to look at but he should be able to do most of the research and write up. It doesn’t have to be that detailed.

saraclara · 15/01/2021 16:42

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I used to have piles of holiday brochures and fantasise about where I'd go. I'd make copious notes about which hotels had what facilities, costs etc, which beaches were the best, what the sights were, even though I knew* that I'd never ever be able to travel there. I loved it.

So yep, this assignment is fantasy and fun. I'm guessing that they made the budget that high simply to stress that this is fantasy and not reality.

*my 10 year old self wasn't to know how things would change in a few decades and how attainable long haul travel would become. Let's say that all that research stood me in good stead later in life!

LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett · 15/01/2021 16:44

DS has had something similar but they give them a menu of things to choose from. They do their own budget. Then they have questions like 'The Brown family of 4 want to do the same trip but only have £500' (or whatever). If their income is x and they can save y, how long would it take them to save up for this trip? How could they save up for the trip in z weeks instead (answer, pick a cheaper hotel, for eg).

The looking up, understanding the options etc would take ages for my DS and would not actually teach the subject, which is money and budgeting.

Doublefaced · 15/01/2021 16:48

Such a weird assignment.
A lot of kids in some schools wouldn’t have experienced anything like a holiday abroad and would be totally overwhelmed.
Very odd. I’d assume it was set by a very inexperienced and/or insensitive teacher.

helloyoumums · 15/01/2021 16:54

My dd did this assignment when she was about 10. It was in pairs though, so they could help each other. They were given iPads for that lesson to help, so if she didn't know how expensive something was, she looked it up. I'm sure they're capable of looking up a word/price at that age

Sarahandco · 15/01/2021 16:56

expedia?

Ellapaella · 15/01/2021 17:03

I can't imagine my 20 year old would enjoy planning for a holiday so expensive that he will never experience in his childhood. A more realistic budget would be much better and probably inspire more enthusiasm. I'm sure he could do it but he would need some help.

Ellapaella · 15/01/2021 17:03

Haha 10 year old not 20 year old

mam0918 · 15/01/2021 17:11

@Doublefaced

Such a weird assignment. A lot of kids in some schools wouldn’t have experienced anything like a holiday abroad and would be totally overwhelmed. Very odd. I’d assume it was set by a very inexperienced and/or insensitive teacher.

Not really, I never went abroad as a kid (or annual holiday a b&b in blackpool with our grandparents) but I still dreamt of going to Disney etc... and watched gameshows where prizes where holidays to africa and thailand etc... I never sat an cried because I didnt get to go, thats just life and half the kids I knew never got to go abroad.

When I did get a passport dispite having never flown or been abroad before I had no struggles booking a successful holiday for me an my pre-schooler in under two weeks between booking and leaving (not even a package everything sourced indervidually).

Its really not a hard concept to do or even a hard thing to actually put into action.

PelekiEki · 15/01/2021 17:13

As an aside OP, if you do end up going to Berlin and as your DS seems to love Tiergarten, may I suggest you don't come in the winter

I live 15 mins away from Tiergarten and walk through it every day to work. It's a beautiful place in summer and autumn but boy, does it look grey right now! Anything from May onwards should be safe Or you could come in January when there's not a leaf left in the whole park, and try making your way through the snow like I had to this week 🤣

Original poster

HerRoyalNotness · 15/01/2021 17:16

@helloyoumums

My dd did this assignment when she was about 10. It was in pairs though, so they could help each other. They were given iPads for that lesson to help, so if she didn't know how expensive something was, she looked it up. I'm sure they're capable of looking up a word/price at that age

Well yes but it’s a bit more. For example we needed to put in the dates for the hotel to get prices. For the flights we also had dates and had to choose an airline and work out if we’d do one stop or 2 stops. For the restaurants they had to be named and menu selected and prices, he had to know where to look for restaurants in Berlin, navigate a site in German, see if had an English version, find the menu, make choices for the family, add it up and then convert to USD. Quite overwhelming for a first timer let alone a child.

OP posts:

Original poster

HerRoyalNotness · 15/01/2021 17:19

@PelekiEki

As an aside OP, if you do end up going to Berlin and as your DS seems to love Tiergarten, may I suggest you don't come in the winter

I live 15 mins away from Tiergarten and walk through it every day to work. It's a beautiful place in summer and autumn but boy, does it look grey right now! Anything from May onwards should be safe Or you could come in January when there's not a leaf left in the whole park, and try making your way through the snow like I had to this week 🤣

We love the snow! But We based our prices on flying in May.

I remember flying into Austria from the Middle East one winter and it snowed and snowed for the whole two weeks. It was amazing

OP posts:

Doublefaced · 15/01/2021 17:21

‘Its really not a hard concept to do or even a hard thing to actually put into action.’

Ah of course. Because there are no vulnerable kids in the UK living in poverty.
At least not on MN

LadyCatStark · 15/01/2021 17:22

DS (11) would not be able to do this as a completely open ended task, completely independently. He ha no idea how you go about booking holiday, he just goes on them 😂.

He’d know that he’d want to go to Japan so the flights would take up a large part of his budget, but he wouldn’t know how to book a flight or what websites to go on, why would he, he’s 11!

He wouldn’t know how to find a suitable hotel or how to look up activities. Actually, I would find this hard other than ringing our travel agent and telling them to find us a good deal!

PelekiEki · 15/01/2021 17:30

I absolutely love it when it snows here yes! I'm from Southern Europe so I'd seen real snow (not fake ski resort) twice before moving here. Just that really, the Tiergarten is nothing special in the winter. It's just some naked branches and lots of mud. Austria is beautiful in winter. Berlin is cold, dark, damp and ugly, really not the best city until April/May - so great choice of dates OP/OP's DS

ShinyGreenElephant · 15/01/2021 17:45

My 11yo did similar recently and was fine with it

LizFlowers · 15/01/2021 18:32

He can google!

2bazookas · 15/01/2021 18:39

I am very sad to see some of the reposnses here.
We're talking about home education , yes? So there is a degree of parental involvement.
So supervise the googling. Talk to kids about their assignments? an entire family of kids could talk about what kind of holiday they'd like to win.. No exclusion for kids who have never been anywhere; they've never been a princess or fired a gun or ridden a broomstick either, but they've all played that and imagination has no limits. They've all seen other countries on TV.
"they wouldn't know how to book a flight"? Start with, where could you catch a plane. An airport. Where's the nearest airport to us?

"Too many things for him to do". It's a list. Teach a kid that when he sees a list, you don't try to do everything at once, you start at the top with one thing. Then work through it, one item at a time. Breaking up any task into easily managed sections is a skill needed in education and life. Any parent can teach this.

       This is what school and home  education is all about;   teaching children  about the world, teaching them new skills,  encouraging them to think and  discuss.