Travel With Teens and Tweens

Taking Teens Out of School for Family Travel — The Recovery Continues

Apr 092012

The question about whether to take kids out of school so they can travel always evokes a firestorm of discussion in the family travel blogsphere. Parents of younger children often feel the kids learn more while traveling than they do in the classroom. For some parents, family travel is such a high priority that they embrace homeschooling or even unschooling so the family can travel year-round. Still others plan a year off to travel the world and figure their kids can pick up where they left off when they get back. Alternatively, for many of us more traditional traveling families with teens and tweens, family travel options often get squeezed by the demands of school, sports, sleep away camps and the pull of teenage friends at home. Our family has a standing rule [...]

Know the Special US Passport Application Rules that Apply to Kids,Teens and Tweens

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Mar 082012

Know the Special US Passport Application Rules that Apply to Kids,Teens and Tweens

March 10th is Passport Day in the USA. All US Passport offices and many other passport acceptance facilities will be open for you and your teens and tweens to apply for a passport without an appointment. You will be able to apply for standard processing (4-6 weeks) or pay an additional $60 for expedited processing (2-3 weeks, door-to-door). If you’ve been putting off getting your teen or tween a passport – or renewing the one they have - this is a great opportunity. The State Department recommends renewing a passport 9 months prior to expiration. Since minors under the age of 15 have to renew passports every 5 years, the deadline can sneak up on parents who don’t realize that the shelf life of a child’s passport is half that of an adult. [...]

When Should Teens Pay for Their Own Travel?

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Feb 202012

When Should Teens Pay for Their Own Travel?

As teens get older and start to travel on their own the question arises as to when should mom and dad foot the bill and when should the teen pay for himself? We’ve been asking this question as the older teen’s spring and summer travel plans are adding up. Specifically we are talking about: A week in Italy on a school sponsored trip A week in Florida on a church sponsored service trip Revisit travel to anywhere from 2 to 5 colleges for accepted student days A family trip to the beach in July A trip to Disney with classmates to celebrate the end of High School And thats just what we know about at the moment….. Clearly family trips are on mom and dad, we’re lucky he still wants to join [...]

Plan Ahead for International Class Trips for Teens

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Feb 072012

Plan Ahead for International Class Trips for Teens

It wasn’t so long ago we were writing about the challenges related to letting a young teen head out on a school sponsored class trip to Washington DC or New York. These types of trips are a rite of passage for many 8th graders and usually involve loading a couple hundred kids and way to too few chaperones onto a dozen buses and heading on down the interstate – tracking them via their cell phone GPS and texting to check in the whole time they are gone! At a price measured in hundreds of dollars for a few days of educational travel it wasn’t too hard to fit into the budget with a little help from the grandparents. Moving on to high school, class trips take on a whole new [...]

And The Winner Is…..

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Dec 232011

This year’s Passports With Purpose travel blogger fund raiser set a goal to raise $80,000 to build two libraries in Zambia in collaboration with Room to Read. Over the course of two weeks, donations came in by the thousands, $10 at a time, and when it was over we made our goal and passed it by almost $10,000. As of today, the total was $89,699! Needless to say, the almost 100 bloggers who participated are thrilled and its all thanks to you our readers and sponsors. Travel with Teens and Tweens was honored to host the prize of a one day Family Pass for 4 donated by the Monkey Trunks Extreme high ropes and zipline aerial adventure centers in Chocorua, NH, Weirs Beach, NH and Saco, Maine. Monkey Trunks Extreme is a must do activity for families with [...]

Reach for the Sky with Monkey Trunks Extreme and Passports with Purpose

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Nov 292011

This is the fourth holiday season the travel blogger community, and our many travel partners, have rallied to help improve the lives of children in developing countries around the world via the Passports with Purpose fund raiser. The program started small with a handful of bloggers raising $7,500 for Heifer International in 2008. In 2009, 90 bloggers raised $30,000 to help build a school in Cambodia. Last year, over 100 bloggers raised about $65,000 to build 25 homes in the small village of Karunganni in South India. This year, the goal is $80,000 to build two libraries in Zambia in partnership with Room to Read. How It Works Each participating blogger features a travel-related prize donated by a generous sponsor. This year there are more than 100 prizes available that include [...]

A Halloween Fright – Your College Application is Due Tomorrow!

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Oct 312011

A Halloween Fright - Your College Application is Due Tomorrow!

For high school seniors, Halloween isn’t just a day on the calendar that provides a reason to dress up and attend parties. Rather, it marks the deadline for filing Early Decision and Early Action college applications since most are due by November 1st. For those readers who are not as far down the college application rabbit hole as we, are a little context might explain why tonight is such a scary time for so many teens. At many colleges, the applicant’s chances of getting accepted can be significantly higher if they make an early application and it can be further impacted by the type of Early Application that is filed. Specifically: Option A: Early Decision is a binding process that generally results in the highest percentage of applications being accepted when compared [...]

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