Take an Educational Trip to Your Car Dealership!

As you may know by now, our son has a deep, fervent love for the Porsche 911 Carerra S! This Porsche has been his “baby” since his discovery of her in the Disney Pixar movie “Cars.” Yes, Lightning McQueen is “cool” and all, but NO other car on the movie (or in reality) could he dare care more about than “Sally,” the soft, powder blue “love interest” of McQueen. Now that we’ve accepted our son’s love for cars may never pass, we’ve managed to encourage his interest by reading lots of Porsche/sports car material, creating lesson plans and unit studies on vehicles, visiting several car dealerships (mostly Porsche), and visiting museums and other historic facilities that highlight the history of cars. AND, not only do we continue to feed his need for vehicular experiences, we’ve discovered active ways to make a single trip to a car dealership be quite educational, engaging, and exploratory! Here’s how we feed his intrigued need.

We thought our son, Xander’s, love for Porsches was all about the look. I mean, they are beauts! Believe it or not, the exterior and interior parts are secondary to why he loves these vehicles. He is genuinely amazed by the “sound of the engine!” It’s his “favorite engine call.” No other engine compares, in his book. He enjoys listening to them crank, rev, accelerate, idle, even turn off. WHENEVER a Porsche is in hearing distance, we HAVE to “let the windows down” so that he can “enjoy the sound of the engine.” Fascinating!

​Being that we are NOT (currently) in the market for a spanking brand new Porsche (or any other vehicle at this time, for that matter), visiting the Porsche dealership is the (next) BEST THING! AND, because we’ve visited dealerships so many times, we’ve managed to turn our (planned) trips into learning opportunities and academic adventures.

Here’s how we’ve infused schoolwork into our trip to the car dealership. First, we hash out the EDUCATIONAL part of the trip, followed by the purely FUN part!

EDUCATIONAL PART

1. WRITING- pre-write at least 5 questions about Porsches or cars that he can then ask the salesperson.
2. MATH - solve MPH calculations/ratios in reference to the Porsche vs the Audi R8 (or whatever other car he's in the mood for challenging against his Porsche). In younger days, I’d find a math sheet with a car on it and let him do addition/subtraction.
3. READING/HISTORY - Rent tons of books on vehicles, sports cars, Porsches, history of cars, etc. and let him read as much as time allotted prior to our trip (he’d sometimes discover questions during reading to ask the salesperson).
4. ART - take lots of photos and choose one to draw, color, replicate later
5. SPELLING/VOCABULARY - there are always TONS of spelling and vocabulary words in the reading lessons to incorporate into our “words to learn” study bank. Words like “torque, accelerate, calipers,” etc are great words to learn how to spell, pronounce, and understand the definitions of. Read about fun ways we practice language arts here.
6. GRAMMAR - in the younger years, parts of speech were easy and fun to learn, in reference to all things cars. Determining if words are nouns or verbs is fun when centered around a favorite interest. 
7. GEOGRAPHY - what country are Porsche’s made in? Audi, Bentley, Aston Martin, etc? Then find them on the map. When he got older, we’d map out unique routes to our dealerships and allow HIM to navigate to get us there, from start to finish, using “old school” mapping equipment like a tangible, paper, foldable map, a compass, and magnifying glass (mostly for me to see the tiny writing on the maps). See our article on “4 Ways to Groom a Geographer” here.

FUN PART
The BEST part about “taking a trip to your car dealership” is actually getting there, standing amidst all the new rides, and then GOING FOR A TEST DRIVE!!!

If you’re not up for actually driving, go for a test RIDE! We’ve done this SEVERAL times, and not only does my son get a rush from experiencing actually being INSIDE “his” Porsche’s, but the salesmen always enjoy “showing off” to my youngster because it’s quite evident that my son is clearly taking it ALL IN!

Each “new” salesman we get is quite intrigued to discover that Xander requires that the radio is turned completely O-F-F! His way to “experience the ride” is, remember, his love for the “beautiful sound Porsche’s engines make.” Believe it or not, even I recognize the sound of a Porsche’s start-up now! My son is SO proud of me.  :)

Trips to our car dealership are always interesting, informative, and exciting! And that’s the gist of taking YOUR first, specific, deliberate, planned trip to your Porsche (or Mercedes, Jaguar, etc) car dealership! It’s definitely an experience sitting right at your fingertips waiting to be embraced. :)

Have you taken a carefree, stress-free trip to a car dealership with your students/children before? What cars did you test drive? Or did you test ride instead? DO TELL, in the comments section below)! And we hope you’re inspired to try this yourselves.

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​“Set a goal big enough that in the process of achieving it, you become someone worth becoming.” Jim Rohn

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