Overcoming Carsickness

Do Your Children Get Carsick?
Do your children get car sick when they read or write in the car? Do you know why?

Carsickness is caused because information sent to the brain from the eyes and from the inner ear are out of synch. When you travel in the car, passengers (especially those in the back seat) may not be looking at the horizon ahead – for example, when they are reading or writing. Their eyes don’t register the movement of the car even though the liquid in their inner ear is being stimulated by the motion of the car. The eyes tell the brain there is no movement. The inner ear delivers the opposite message to the brain. The conflicting information of the mismatched cues to the brain results in nausea.

If your kids get motion sickness, you’ll need to find activities that don’t require the "trigger" activities of reading or paperwork. They can easily listen to music, audiobooks, and audio recordings that help with spelling, math and other subjects without getting sick. Here are some resources your family may enjoy:

• Audio Memory offers all kinds of subjects set to music including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, grammar, geography, history, science, foreign languages, and bible studies.
• Sara Jordan Songs That Teach has a huge selection of songs that teach foreign languages, history, math, phonics, language arts, social studies, and more. Sign up for the free newsletter to get free activities that enhance learning.
• Songs For Teaching has lots of audio clips of educational songs for every subject that you can listen to before you purchase their products — check out the selection of children’s music, nursery rhymes, and folk songs too.
• AudioBookshelf has some of the best books and family listening titles on CD. Not only that, they offer free, downloadable "Curricular Connections" for each book title. Developed for classroom use, they can be tweaked to enhance learning in the car too!
• Greathall Productions offers "intelligent entertainment for the thinking family." Storyteller extraordinaire Jim Weiss weaves wonderful tales from myths, legends, folklore and more to bring you cultural literacy on CD.

A Word to the Pennywise: Check to see if these resources are free through your local library.

Don’t forget to play games that require the players to look out the window. For example, have your kids search for 3-syllable words on billboards, or words that end in "ing," or compound words, or words with particular prefixes or suffixes, etc. Have the kids search for parts of speech – for example nouns (a word that describes a person, place, or thing).

Not only will these kinds of activities help kids learn without getting carsick – but they are fun too. When you make learning a fun game, you will always get better results.

Want to use this article in your blog, E-Zine, or website? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Diane Flynn Keith publishes the rave-reviewed Carschooling® ezine with 5,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to have more fun learning with your children while you’re in the car, on the road – get your FREE subscription to Carschooling® now at Carschooling.