Latest High School Vacation Planning Project

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

So my son comes home today with another big project. He has to build a website around it.

The kids were given a choice of 4 states with a budget of 5,000.00. They have to travel all over their chosen state with that money. They can take as much time as they want as long as their money holds out.

They have to build a website starting with info about their chosen state, then another page with the itinary and another with the actual budget. Plus another page on the attractions they visit with reviews, food place they've eaten at with reviews, hotels they stayed at (no reviews needed here).

The itinerary and budget portions are due on Monday.

My son has picked Arizona. So far he has the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, Monument Valley and the Petrified Forest as places to visit. He wanted to come up with a couple more so if you have ideas, he'll check them out.

Where can he get restaurant info so he can figure out where to eat and food reviews? He asked me if I knew of anywhere.
I figure he can get attraction reviews from tripadvisor.com.

I hate these kind of projects and I'm not even the one who has to do it. It doesn't help that this particular teacher doesn't give advice on where the kids can look for the info and often changes paremeters of projects partway through. Ugh.

 

[kwelch10377]

Trip advisor will have restaurant reviews as well.

I wish I had projects like this in school, I would love to do something like this. I could see the teacher not telling the kids where to find the info, I'm sure part of the point of the project is for the kids to be able to find the info themselves.

 

[Katy Belle]

www.tripadvisor.com

That should give him everything he needs! Just put in the city and state... then there are sections with reviews of everything .. "things to do" "restaurants" "hotels" etc. There are links to the websites of the actual attractions in the reviews. I use it for all of my trip planning!

They also have forums...so if he wants to ask questions he can. Some of the forums aren't very active, but lots are.

Sounds like a fun project!

 

[jen0610]

Sedona - Slide Rock.

http://www.gatewaytosedona.com/article/id/252/page/1

 

[snarlingcoyote]

Yelp also has good reviews on just about everything, but Urbanspoon is my go-to for food reviews these days.

If he's interested in Arizona archaeology (and it's got a lot!) here's a list of sites that are open to the public.

 

[Mom-to-2-Princesses]

This project sounds like tons of fun for me! I planning vacations! (but probably not your son as much)

If you belong to AAA, get your free Arizona book. They have diamonds on the first page with the "must sees" of Arizona and in the book they describe attractions in the area. I have ours from our vacation to Arizona and here is the info. They suggest in alphabetical order:
Benson -- Kartchner Caverns State Park
Canyon de Chelly National Monument
Casa Grande Ruins National Monument
Chiricahua National Monument
Dragoon -- Amerind Foundation Museum
Ganado -- Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Lake Powell)
Grand Canyon National Park
Lake Mead National Recreation Area -- Hoover Dam
Montezuma Castle National Monument
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
Navajo National Monument
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Petrified Forest National Park
Phoenix -- Arizona Capital Museum, Desert Botanical Gardens, Heard Museum, Phoenix Art Museum
Saguaro National Park
Sedona -- Oak Creek Canyon (and YES to Slide Rock)
Supai -- Havasu Canyon
Tombstone
Tucson -- Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Arizona State Museum, Mission San Xavier Del Bac, Tucson Mountain Park
Tumacacori National Historic Park
Tuzigoot National Monument
Walnut Canyon National Monument
Williams -- Grand Canyon Railway
Winslow -- Meteor Crater
Wupatiki National Monument

Other resources -- Tripadvisor, local library with have travel books by states, Arizona tourism sites, bus tours (I figure they know where to go!)

There is also skiing in the Flagstaff area.

And Four Corners -- the only spot in the United States where you can stand in four states at the same time (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah)

His budget should buy the annual pass for the National Parks to keep the costs down. Also, most of the National Parks have free Ranger lead programs. It will allow his "trip/website" to be more full without spending money. http://www.nps.gov/index.htm will give him info on all the National Parks and Monuments and even have the Ranger Programs listed.

Fun things to do (but cost money) -- rent a pontoon boat on Lake Powell (Page), take a raft float on the Colorado River (Page), take a Pink Jeep Tour (Sedona), ride a donkey into the Grand Canyon, skiing near Flagstaff, ride the railway into Grand Canyon (Williams)

Some favorite eating that we did on our trip:
-- outside of Phoenix in Chandler is Rawhide ( http://www.rawhide.com/ ) It is a Wild West recreation with dinner show.
-- in Page, Arizona (Lake Powell area) is the Dam Bar and Grille ( http://www.damplaza.com/dambar.html ) It was fun because the inside theming was like the Glen Canyon Dam and just cute. If his "trip" doesn't get him near Hoover Dam he should do Glen Dam -- it is the 2nd largest after Hoover.
-- Cameron Trading Post -- have to have the Navajo Taco! And there is lots of tourist shopping.

For itinerary -- If he flies into Phoenix, then to Flagstaff to Petrified Forest National Park to Canyon de Chelly, to Lake Powell, to Grand Canyon, to Sedona, to Prescott, to Phoenix. Then down to Tucson if time and money allow. Even though Lake Mead and Hoover would be cool -- they are a fair driving distance without any other attractions nearby and if he recommends Page, about 2 hours from the Grand Canyon, he has the water and Dam.

(Our trip was Phoenix - Flagstaff (Montzuma Castle, Sunset Crater Volcano, Wupatki) - Page (Lake Powell, Glen Dam) - Grand Canyon -- Sedona (Red Rocks, Oak Creek Canyon, Slide Rock)-- Phoenix which is pretty common. We loved Page, so make sure he looks into that.)

I would print a road map and start "starring" areas to see and come up with a route.

Lucky he's not my son, I would probably do the project for him I'm having too much fun just answering your questions!

Good luck to your son!

 

[GaSleepingBeautyFan]

We've been working on it for 2 hours and the parts due tomorrow still aren't done. All I've been doing is answering questions and guiding him on where he should be looking.

I'm hoping this is the hard part and that gathering the reviews of the attractions/hotels/restaurants will be much easier.
At least he now knows about tripadvisor.com so he can do that part himself.

He still has other homework for another class to do today. He really should have done that yesterday. Grrrrr.

 

[TheGottis]

UrbanSpoon has great (and some not so great) reviews by everyday people, too.

 

[Boston Tea Party]

Have you considered letting him do the work on his own? I noticed that you wrote "we" have been working on it.

Respectfully, he is in high school and needs to develop problem solving/critical thinking skills.

My 5th graders are currently doing a similar project, minus the website. There is a commercial company, Envision, who has the project as one of their independent research components of a four project, year long program.

Researching the information is well within the scope of the capabilities of the average high school student.

Best of luck to you.

 

[chamonix]

I think you've made this way too hard on yourself. All I did is google "Arizona vacation itineraries" and there was lots of good hits. Check out tour company itineraries that come up. An "itinerary" isnt fleshed out with exact details, it just says things like, "Day One: Sedona" "Day Two: Grand Canyon" "Day Three: Flagstaff" etc etc. If you wanted to get more detailed you could say, "Day One: hiking in Sedona" "Day Two: fly over Grand Canyon" etc.

Fill in with the restaurant, hotel, activity details later. There will be many options in all price ranges. (btw, I like Yelp for restaurant reviews--you know, like if I'm actually going to EAT there, lol, but for this type of fantasy project I would just google "Arizona restaurants" or google each town as you go. Again, there will always be the chance to choose a hotel or restaurant later based on budget.

Here a great link that came up in the top three entries when I googled "Arizona vacation itineraries":
http://www.arizonaguide.com/itineraries/create-your-trip
This website allows you to build your own itinerary on their site and save it. In fact.....if you scroll down to the bottom of the first page there it links to other peoples "public" Arizona vacation itineraries......but I would probably just follow my kids lead on what types of activities s/he likes to do.....historical sites? Animals? Hiking? If he likes flying visit aerospace museum, helicopter over the Grand Canyon.....you get the idea.....

I travel to Arizona every month or two (family reasons) it's a great place! Hope this project is fun for you two, perhaps your family or just your son will get excited enough about it to want to visit someday! This just sounds like such a fun project.

 

[declansdad]

Give your son a link to Google and let him do it himself. He's in high school, right?

 

[Alesia]

Surely your son is capable of googling "things to do in Arizona." You need to start making him do his own work. I did an almost identical project (minus creating the website) in 5th grade without any help.

 

[NHdisneylover]

Have you considered letting him do the work on his own? I noticed that you wrote "we" have been working on it.

Respectfully, he is in high school and needs to develop problem solving/critical thinking skills.

My 5th graders are currently doing a similar project, minus the website. There is a commercial company, Envision, who has the project as one of their independent research components of a four project, year long program.

Researching the information is well within the scope of the capabilities of the average high school student.

Best of luck to you.

This is what I was thinking. The project should be doable by most upper elementary kids with minimal parental support--by high school this ought to be something you as a parent need not be involved in at all unless he has LDs which prevent it. Just tell him his generation should be better at computers than you and to call a friend if he gets stuck and let him learn how to do it. The intent of such a project is not really to learn a lot about the state he is researching--it is to learn HOW to research, organize and present material. You shouldn't be doing any of that for him, in my opinion.

 

[golfgal]

This is what I was thinking. The project should be doable by most upper elementary kids with minimal parental support--by high school this ought to be something you as a parent need not be involved in at all unless he has LDs which prevent it. Just tell him his generation should be better at computers than you and to call a friend if he gets stuck and let him learn how to do it. The intent of such a project is not really to learn a lot about the state he is researching--it is to learn HOW to research, organize and present material. You shouldn't be doing any of that for him, in my opinion.

Our kids had to do this project in 6th grade.

We ate here last week: http://www.ebisurestaurants.com/sushi_menu.html

The food was good.

 

[kamik86]

I agree this seems like an easy enough assignment.

It was like one I had in middle school computer class where we were asked on a survey for our favorite song, CD, and a few other things. Then we had to search for questions like who wrote the song, produced the CD etc and then print the page and turn it in. The point was not that he wanted the info, heck many of us knew the answers to some of these questions arlready. (Since most of us had our favorite CD and a CD with our favorite song) but still had to find the information online.

That is the point of this and why the teacher doesn't tell them where to look, because they are in high school and college and when you have a job they just want the answer. If your boss knew exactly where the answer was they probably wouldn't be paying you to find it. As for changing requirements... this is something my teachers did all the time in college, purposefully. I have done many competitions and projects with high school students where we do the same thing... why? Because customers tend to do this... alot.

 

[GinnyEmma]

My kids did this in jr. high. Why are you working on this project?

 

[shortbun]

Your son is 15? This is just another time wasting project from a bad high school teacher.
If my 15yo son was given this project, I'd be putting in a call to the teacher to ask the purpose and standards this project was covering. Is there a class on vacation planning?
Btw, he should be doing all this work on the internet. And-tell him to add Sedona and Vegas. Also tell him to do the project exactly as the teacher assigned it, no embellishments. It's not worth his time. I have a son who is 15 and in high school, just so you know.