How we do school – Homeschooling on the road

Traveling with my kids is possibly the best thing I’ve ever done. They have a joy for discovery and adventure that is contagious, often spreading out from them and infecting me. They see things that I would have missed, and they dive in where I might have hesitated. It’s wonderful! 

But for all that, there’s also a lot of responsibilities that come with traveling with kids. Like making sure that they get their education.

Making sure that your kids learn everything they need to be successful in life is one of those things that can be intimidating, or overwhelming. That’s part of why so many choose to send their kids to public school. They don’t have to think about it as much because their education has been outsourced.

Home-schoolers instead will often have entire rooms filled to the brim with schooling materials, craft supplies, books, and educational games and toys. Those materials take up space that we don’t have. That leads people to wonder, how on earth can you do homeschooling while traveling full-time? 

And honestly, it can be tough at times. Still, it is definitely possible! 

There are plenty of different ways to learn on the go, and each family does things a little differently. Our family plan is still taking shape as we find new resources and add them in, but in general, we use a mix of pre-made curricula, educational apps, and experiential learning through field trips to teach our kids everything they need to know. 

Curricula

When we first started looking at schooling for our kids, we were mostly stationary, and in an area that didn’t have public schools that met our standards. So, we chose to homeschool. 

The number of curriculum options available in the homeschooling world is staggering, but they tend to boil down to two main choices. Either you design your own curriculum or you purchase a ready-made one and work through it. My wife and I each had jobs that were taking up most of our time, so we decided to invest in a ready-made curriculum. 

Sonlight

That curriculum was Sonlight. Sonlight is a literature-based curriculum that works under the premise that if you get your kids reading great books, they will learn. And honestly, that makes a lot of sense to me. As a kid, I constantly had my nose in a book, and I learned a ton just from reading.

They have lesson plans listed out, so it’s as easy as “open up the book and teach.” It feels a lot like traditional schooling in some ways, with set lessons in each subject to keep kids moving along a specific path. It makes sure to hit all the main points to help you to avoid missing anything, and it worked great for us until we became mobile. 

That’s because Sonlight came with boxes and boxes of books! 

It just wasn’t feasible to take all that with us. So, we went digital. 

If you have more money than time, or if you haven’t already purchased the books you need, it’s honestly not all that difficult to go fully digital. Just buy the books that you need on your platform of choice, load them onto your reader, and go. 

We, however, already had a few years of Sonlight books in boxes scattered around my mother-in-law’s basement. We didn’t want to have to reinvest, so we took a different path and scanned them all.

What we ended up with was a PDF copy of each book that we could read on any of our phones or tablets. 

There were also a large number of worksheets and workbooks that went with the readings. We didn’t have a great way to digitalize those, so we organized them into three-ring binders that are traveling with us.

Even though we’ve tried to switch to mostly digital books, there’s still a lot of Sonlight content that we still use. If you’re interested in looking into Sonlight, you can use our referral code (ES20461397) to get $5 off your first order of $50 or more and earn us a discount in the process. Check them out here.

The Good and the Beautiful

Apps

Alongside our set homeschool curricula, we’ve also started using several different educational apps to help the kids dig into different subjects. There are a lot of benefits to this route, but a lot of pitfalls, too. Sometimes, it can be as easy as setting them loose to play on their kindles, and sometimes it’s sitting down with them and helping them work through the tough spots. 

We’re always looking for more apps and websites that are genuinely helpful for our kids’ education, but these are the ones that we’ve been using. 

Math – Prodigy Math

A lot of public schools were using this one, so we took a look and my kids both love it. 

The idea is to make math learning into a video game to keep kids engaged and encourage learning. It is gamification learning at its best. 

Prodigy Math is basically Pokemon, but with math. The user gets to be a powerful wizard who solves math problems to cast spells. The goal is to free the denizens of a magical kingdom from the tyranny of the “Puppet Master.” They go around helping free monsters from his control. These monsters can also be recruited to your team and used to fight. 

As the game goes on, the math problems change to try to meet your kid where they are. That means someone at a 1st-grade math level and someone at a 3rd-grade level each gets different problems, even though they’re playing the same part of the game. 

It’s super fun, but beware! Your kids will absolutely want the paid subscription version so they can get access to all the goodies. I think it’s worth it, as my kids’ math abilities have increased with minimal input from us. 

Language Arts – The Night Zookeeper

The Night Zookeeper is another fairly recent addition for us. It came out of our battles with the kids about doing their creative writing assignments from the Sonlight curriculum. Our kids are great storytellers, but they don’t like to write. Typing things out on a computer, however, seems like a lot of fun. After all, Mom and Dad do it all the time.

The Night Zookeeper lets the kids explore a zoo by writing stories. It gives them practice telling stories, helps to teach them parts of speech, like nouns and verbs, and teaches them about punctuation. It also gives them real-world practice on a keyboard, which is still new for them.

There is a bit of interaction with other students around the world through comments on their writing, but it is heavily monitored. 

For us, the jury is still out on this one. My son seems to enjoy it, for a little while, but he still gets frustrated during the creative writing portions, which was the whole reason we looked into it. For now, though, it seems to be a helpful tool for getting him started. 

Music – Prodigies

We purchased the lifetime plan for Prodigies before we became digital nomads. The idea was to give the kids some extracurricular experience with music, and when the kids want to do it, it’s a ton of fun. 

They have engaging and colorful music lesson videos that teach the basics of musical theory, and the kids love making up songs. They also have printable PDF workbooks that go along with the lessons. 

Their earlier lessons are designed to go along with a set of desk bells, but if you don’t want to travel with those, there is a free app that works well enough. 

They have a free trial, and several different payment options, so if you’re interested, definitely give it a look!

Field Trips

This is the whole reason for travel! 

Well, for us it is. Travel is all about discovering the parts of the world that we don’t already know. It’s about experiencing new places and cultures, hearing new languages, and learning new things. 

Honestly, I suggest making regular field trips a part of everyone’s education, whether they are traveling the world or not. Though, it can be a lot easier to find something new when you’re constantly in a new place. Still, there are a ton of great field trip options out there!

We try to do at least one or two “big” field trips each week. These are the grand experiences, like visiting Mayan ruins, taking cooking classes, or hiking a volcano. We typically do these on the weekend, since there’s not a lot else that gets done on field trip days, but things like cooking classes can also make a nice mid-week change of pace. 

Smaller field trips can be sprinkled throughout the week. Things like exploring a local artisan market, visiting a local park, or even going to the library all have important things to teach even if they aren’t an “epic” destination. Learning about buying groceries, or how a checking account works, is just as important as learning about the life cycle of frogs (or more than). Teaching through experiences can teach kids new information in a way that words alone can’t compete with.

Getting a quality education for your kids shouldn’t ever be impossible, no matter where in the world you are. The way we do things isn’t the right choice for everyone, but I hope that by getting a glimpse into the way we do school on the go, you can find some inspiration!