Every year, we like to surprise the kids with an experience. To be honest with you, we have enough THINGS right now. My house is FILLED with THINGS. If you give me one more THING I think my house will sink right into the ground. What the kids really need are memories. Memories last a lifetime – not plastic toys. And, I need them too. We all do – as a family unit. Trips do magical things for families. Sure, we fight along the way because it’s utterly exhausting to get across the pond, but it’s always entirely worth the effort. This Christmas, we surprised our kids with a trip to Europe and I wanted to show you how we did it. I made a presentation on Canva – a free online tool that I use for pretty much EVERYTHING I make for this site. In less than 15 minutes, I put this puppy together.
How We Surprised Our Kids With A Trip To Europe On Christmas
I want to note that I took away some of the slides because they have personal information on them about this trip like dates, the name of the ship we’re going on, and the names of our travel partners. I will make note where I omitted those slides.
Our Surprise Trip Presentation For The Kids
A slide appeared here showing them the name of the ship. It also showed what the outside of the ship looked like.
A slide appeared showing them our sail dates.
A slide appeared showing them some inside shots of the ship.
Multiple slides appeared showcasing the families that also booked this trip.
I wanted to have all of this show up on the television. I should have turned it into a little video and played it off of YouTube, but like I said, there was personal information that I just didn’t want online. This trip is actually REALLY exciting for me because I have never been to so many of those countries. I am a girl who likes to check off places off the map and this vacation is going to help me mark quite a few different spots off my travel list.
We surprised the kids with this very simple presentation, but my other friends had different ideas about how they shared the news about this adventure. One family made a photo book with visual prompts that enabled her children to put together the pieces and figure out what it all meant. Another had a really great idea and made a mini suitcase filled with travel guides from each location along with photos of each of the families. I thought that was rather clever. But me? I knew that I was going to make all of this the morning of Christmas Eve. That’s how I roll! So, Canva and a presentation was my best bet and it worked. I couldn’t send away for anything because I didn’t have any time. They were so happy.
This will be their fourth trip to Europe. The children have been to Malta, Spain, and the Amalfi Coast/ Rome in Italy. Now, we will cover a lot more land and I cannot WAIT.
I hope this little presentation will give you some inspiration if you are curious how to surprise kids with a trip. And if you don’t know where to start, take a look at my Bucket List: Top 100 Travel Ideas. Before you go anywhere, don’t forget to print my Blank Travel Packing List Printable.
Do you have any plans this year to travel? Would love to hear!