12 family trips to bring school studies to life

Details A week with Let’s Speak (00 33 24 30 26 027, letsspeak.net) costs about £600pp, based on two people staying with the same family (if there’s four of you you’ll be split between two host families). This includes full board and all entrance fees for local sites. A two-day, one night stay costs £225pp person on the same basis. A 10-day course with Fil (fil-ado.com) costs from £990, including full board and activities but not transport

Spanish in Catalonia
Ten hours of Spanish tuition sounds a lot more attractive if it’s mixed up with kayaking, volleyball and bike rides. Families Worldwide’s (0845 051 4567, familiesworldwide.co.uk) eight-day Learn the Lingo! trip to Catalonia kicks off with two-and-a-half hours’ Spanish tuition at inlingua school on four mornings of the holiday (parents are free to join in) followed by activities in the afternoons, which also include a market visit and cookery workshop plus a visit to Barcelona and the Nou Camp, home of Barcelona FC.

Details The holiday starts at £1,129 per child (14+) and £1,149 per adult, including half-board and flights with departures in October half-term and the Easter holidays

Take a battlefield tour
A battlefield trip is a great way for teenagers to get to grips with the realities of both world wars. Leger Holidays is offering child (8-17) discounts on some of its most popular tours, including the four-day Operation Market Garden, following Field Marshal Montgomery’s ill-fated operation to shorten the Second World War . Starting at Joe’s Bridge, the start position of the Guards Armoured Division at the beginning of the operation, it includes visits to Allied and German war graves, a tour of the museum at the Hartenstein Hotel (then the HQ of the British 1st Airborne Division) and the area around Arnhem bridge.

Alternatively, take a self-drive trip, which allows you to explore at your own pace. Book a tour of the Ypres battlefield with Somme Battlefield Tours, including accommodation and Channel crossing, and you’ll get an excellent guide pack with trench maps, photographs of then and now, along with detailed directions and expert commentaries. It can also arrange an English-speaking guide.

Details The April 10 departure with Leger (0844 504 6250, leger.co.uk) costs £269 per child travelling with an adult (£339) based on three nights’ B&B and coach travel. Somme Battlefield Tours (01202 880211, battlefield-tours.com), the cost for three nights for a family of four with two teenagers is £1,298, including Channel crossing or Eurotunnel.

Third Reich tours in Berlin
Berlin is a must-see for GCSE history students but it’s a sprawling city still undergoing heavy rebuilding — the few Third Reich monuments that survived the have been bulldozed or repurposed and there’s not much left of the Wall — so you’ll need a guide to get the best out of it. Try Private Tours Berlin (your-berlin-city-guide.de), which offers customised tours including Berlin’s Jewish heritage. Try to find time for a few hours at one Nazi monument that still exists — Tempelhof airport, now a park where you can bike down the runway.

Details Three nights’ room only at the Hotel Indigo near Alexanderplatz, plus flights, costs £225.50pp with British Airways (ba.com). A two-hour walking tour of Jewish Berlin costs £124 for up to ten people

Live like a Tudor
Britain is peppered with Tudor residences and castles to visit, but for a full-on Tudor experience, head for Long Melford in Suffolk for the weekend of September 27-28 and go to Kentwell Hall for its Tudor Michaelmas, a smaller version of the Great Annual ReCreation that takes place each June. Expect to find about 100 Tudors convinced that it’s still 1578 and activities around the house and gardens. Alternatively, it’s possible to stay in Hampton Court Palace in a Landmark Trust property, the Georgian House, which has views of the palace roofs from the attic and sleeps up to eight. It has a few weekend slots available in October, otherwise you’ll need to book now if you want a slot next summer.

Details Kentwell Hall (01787 310207, kentwell.co.uk) charges £12.90 for adults and £9.40 for children. Stay at the Black Lion Hotel in Long Melford, where a double costs £150 through booking.com. The Georgian House costs from £1,444 for a weekend in October for eight (landmarktrust.org.uk)

Classical Civilisation
Stay in Tolon in the north Peloponnese and it’s an easy drive to the sites of Olympia, Mycenae and Epidavros theatre for a touch of classical civilisation. Once they’ve done the cultural bit, take them to the nearby lovely stretch of sandy beach with watersports to blow off any extra steam. Sunvil Holidays has hotels that are available in October and from May next year.

Or budding classicists, archaeologists and architects should try a cruise on a traditional gulet from Bodrum, across the Aegean Sea from Knidos, to Symi and Rhodes. Oxford art historian Amal Asfour leads this October half-term week-long trip with Westminster Classic Tours, which includes visits to classical sites including the Acropolis and the Temple of Athena, and before departing will lead a tour of the British Museum to see some of the excavated sculptures from the sites on the itinerary. It’s suitable for those aged eight and over.

Details In Tolon, seven nights’ at the King Minos Hotel for half term starts at £839pp B&B in a sea-view family suite, with flights from Gatwick (020 8758 4758, sunvil.co.uk). The week-long gulet cruise from Bodrum costs from £1,800pp including all meals, drinks and visits (0208 286 7842, westminsterclassictours.com). Flights to Bodrum and back from Dalaman with easyJet are not included.

Plate tectonics and volcanoes in Iceland
Iceland is the perfect candidate for a trip to bring geomorphology and the processes of plate tectonics (studied at Key Stage 3) to life. The effects of two major tectonic plates drifting apart can easily be seen above sea level — it’s this activity that brings heat and magma closer to the Earth’s surface and results in all those geothermal pools, geysers and regularly erupting volcanoes. If that’s not enough geography, there are some amazing waterfalls and glaciers to study too. Book the four-night Volcanic Explorer self-drive itinerary from Discover the World and you’ll visit the national park Þingvellir, the waterfall Gullfoss, and the geothermally active valley of Haukadalur , home to geysers Geysir and Strokkur. Though Geysir has been inactive for a long time, Strokkur continues to erupt at five to ten minute intervals.

Details Four nights costs £615pp based on four sharing in October half term and includes flights, B&B and car rental (01737 214 250, discover-the-world.co.uk)

Deserts in Morocco
Pick the right trip to Morocco and you’ll tick off plenty of GCSE geography topics, from hot deserts and their margins to landforms and living in harsh environments. Best still, the country is so interesting, the kids won’t even realise they’re learning as they travel. Fleewinter has an eight-day trip that starts with two nights in Marrakech and then heads over the Atlas, along the Draa Valley (learning en route about the cycle of the river and how it comes and goes and sometimes flows underground) and into the desert for a camel ride and a chat with the nomads around the fire at the desert camp to hear about their ways before bedding down under the stars. Crossing the Iriqi dry lake bed (it only fills every three years), visiting the rock village and meeting the locals at Ait-Ben-Haddou and exploring Tazenakht, the centre of the Berber rug making industry, are also on the itinerary.

Details The eight-day holiday costs £620pp and includes four nights’ B&B, three nights’ half board but not flights, which start at about £100 return (020 7112 0019, fleewinter.com)

Visit Ecuador’s indigenous tribes
Indigenous tribes are a core topic in GCSE geography. What better excuse then, for an extraordinary trip to the Galápagos and the Huaorani people in Ecuador? After a few days in Quito, you’d fly up to the Andean Highlands and then drive to the Ecuadorian Amazon to take a dugout canoe to Huaorani territory. A visit to a Huaorani household, kayaking down the Shiripuno River to camp near the Huaorani village of Nenquepare and seeing the impact of oil production on the area are followed by a week in the Galápagos, staying on Floreana and hopping between islands by speedboat, swimming and snorkelling with sealions, spotting giant tortoises and hiking up to the rim of the Sierra Negra volcano.

Details A 14-day family holiday price starts at £5,389pp, including accommodation in small hotels and lodges, most meals, excursions and all flights (journeylatinamerica.co.uk)

Tech camp for scientists
Tech Camp runs week-long technology camps for children aged 9 to 17 attending without their parents, with courses on website creation, robotics, rocketry, game design and, new for next year, using 3D printers. Its flagship camps are residential and run in Winchester in the summer holidays, but it also offers day camps in London and is planning events in October half-term, although details are still under wraps.

Details techcamp.org.uk

Latin camps
It may be a dead language, but Latin Camp for children only is extremely popular, so it’s good to book them as soon as possible. It runs for two weeks each summer at Wells Cathedral School in Somerset; details for next year will be on the website next month. Expect three formal teaching sessions per weekday, lectures on Roman life and literature, “drop-in” grammar clinics, the chance to meet university lecturers from a variety of classics departments, visits to the Roman sites at Bath and Caerleon/Caerwent – and a toga party. This year it cost £630, full board.

Details latincamp.co.uk

Drama and music
They can polish their performance while you top up your tan at Buccament Bay in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Phil Cavill, the longest running lead in Les Misérables in the West End, will be coaching at half-term and over Christmas at its Drama and Musical Theatre Workshops. The five-day courses will run for two hours each day and coaching will include lessons in singing and performance, culminating in an end-of-week show. The resort also offers regular football academies and occasional netball camps: England netball star and ambassador Sasha Corbin and netball coach Sam Bird will be flying in to coach during May half term (May 25-29).

Details Tropical Sky Holidays (0843 249 5361, tropicalsky.co.uk) has a seven- night stay at Buccament Bay between October 1 and November 30 from £1,619 per adult and £849 per child, based on a family of four sharing a one-bedroom deluxe villa on an all-inclusive basis. Flights are also included.

Trips with younger kids

Romans
Book a tour of Chester with your very own Roman soldier and you’ll end up in the living room of a centurian who lived in the town, then known as Deva Victrix. You can also wander through the ruins of the largest Roman amphitheatre in Britain, and stop off for lunch at Spudulike on Bridge Street, which, unlikely though it sounds, houses the remains of Chester’s Roman baths in its basement.

Details Stay at the Premier Inn Chester City Centre (premierinn.com) where double rooms start at £54 in October half-term. Tours with Roman soldiers cost £5 per adult, £4 per child (romantoursuk.com)

Mayans
The Mayans are a Key Stage 1 history topic and there’s no excuse for a less than perfect project after heading off to Mexico to learn about the rise and fall of the Mayan empire and scrambling around temples and pyramids, Indiana Jones-style, in the jungle. Journey Latin America has a 12-day family holiday, Mayan Adventure with the Riviera Maya, Mérida and the main Mayan sites of Chichén Itzá, Uxmal and Tulum, all in the Yucatán Peninsula, on the itinerary.

Details The 12-day holiday costs £4,040pp, including B&B accommodation, excursions and flights (020 3468 8040, journeylatinamerica.co.uk)

Victorians
Stay in handsome Iron Bridge House, overlooking the Severn Gorge in Shropshire, and you’re in the perfect place to explore the museums and sites of Ironbridge. Blists Hill Victorian Town is close by and when you’re not marvelling at a fully working Victorian street, you can make traditional candles and visit a bakery and sweet shop.

Details Iron Bridge House sleeps up to four people. Three nights between September 5 and September 8 costs £599 (landmarktrust.org.uk)