For a preschool lesson plan covering one to two weeks, you will need a U.S. map, coloring sheets with transportation and vacation themes, crayons and play dough. Hang the map on the wall and ask your students about their travels. Place a flag on your city on the map and mark all the places your students have traveled to with a thumbtack. This gives the students a sense of location and distance. Discuss why they were going there, and by what means, elaborating on this topic with coloring sheets or play dough. Other discussion topics can include the reason for traveling, including holidays or special events, or different landscapes they encountered. By the end of the lessons, the students will not only have a clear idea on means of travel and different landscapes, but also know more about the states in the U.S. and where to find them on a map.
For elementary school students, prepare a lesson plan about traveling in the local area by asking the students to write a journal while they are outside school. Charge the students with making entries at least twice a week about where they are going, how they got there and what they were seeing. The students can illustrate their diary with drawings, pictures, pressed flowers or flyers and tickets of events they attended. Over the period of four to six weeks, give individual students the opportunity to read aloud from their journal. You should have a map available where they can show their route, and exercise books for the journals. These lessons will not only make students more aware about their own neighborhood, but also help them develop thinking, writing and listening skills.
Making a travel brochure can be a fun incentive for a lesson plan in middle school, giving the students the opportunity to learn about geography and history while expressing themselves artistically. Curriculums in middle schools focus on U.S. history and geography, which easily can be incorporated into a travel-themed lesson plan. Collect various brochures to show as examples and ask the students to find an U.S. city they think has a historical significance based on previously acquired knowledge during the curriculum. The students then can create a brochure for that city by describing significant historical events, showing pictures or drawings of monuments and finding demographical information. Give the students up to four weeks to collect the material. During that time you can teach them about research methods and reliable resources. Students at this grade level might need your direction and assistance when gathering information.
Ask high school students to choose a classic or historical travel book. Charge them to create a presentation of the writer and his route mentioned in the work with the help of biographical information, maps, notable events and historical perspective. After six weeks, each student is expected to talk freely about the chosen traveler, present his route on a map, and give some information about the times the subject was living in. The students also should have gained an impression about the significance of the book. Historical travel books such as Mark Twain's "Roughing It," Sven Hedin's "From Pole to Pole," Charles Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle" or various accounts of Captain Cook's voyages are appropriate. The students can use local libraries and Internet resources to find documentation and presentation materials. The lessons plan will be cross-curriculum as it requires essay writing skills, geographical knowledge and historical research.