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Homeschooling on the Road, traveling, etc!
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Ok…can you tell im a new homeschooler because im loaded with questions!LOL! Was wandering how you all do homeschooling when you are traveling or away from home for the day? We have some trips planned soon to travel with daddy for business and I wanted to take advantage of those and visit historical places or whatever is available in the areas, etc. Do you bring your CM with you or do it an easier way? Any ideas! Im not sure if I wanna lug all our books with us when we study away from home. i tried to do homeschooling at the library the other day and it didn’t go too well!
When we have homeschooled while traveling, I have changed our routine up a bit. I try to do something related to the area. For example, when we were in Florida we read some books about the beach and ocean and then went to the beach (my parents live there and I was able to use their library card for books). For math we just stuck with some math games using cards and reviewed math facts (there are several you can do with just a regular deck of cards). For art, I brought along some Fimo clay and made some clay animal. Your right lugging around a lot of books isn’t a lot of fun. If you can’t check books out from the local library you could just spend some time at the library but assign your kids to look up something related to the area and then write about it. Can you find a read aloud that takes place in the area, your kids will have a blast finding the places in the story.
We did quite a lot of travelling last year (missionaries on furlough), and I found it hard to keep up with a normal school schedule when we weren’t in our normal environment. We did keep up with Bible and literature read-alouds as part of our bedtime routine (or audio books in the car), and I tried to make time to have my dd read aloud to me or do a little bit of math (this could be via games as Deb mentioned, or apps if you have an appropriate device) as much as we could (but not daily…just wasn’t possible.) We did keep a kind of trip journal where we drew or pasted in postcards and my dd would dictate something to me about what we had done or seen. We also tried to get in a nature journal entry for each state we passed through, even if it was just sketching flowers at a rest stop, which was kind of fun (We literally did a loop around the permeter of the US, so we saw LOTS of different climates/regions/habitats). In general, I sort of kept the attitude that the trip WAS school and didn’t sweat too much about trying to keep our regular schedule or subjects beyond making sure we didn’t go too long without reviewing the ‘basics’. I figured most kids haven’t seen as much of the US (or the world) as ours have and we can always catch up on reading and math later. =)
HTH,
Jen
We have visited different Libraries in the areas we have been. We have found some really great libraries. We sit and read some of their living books and do some of the activities they have there. It is rather fun.You could do this on rainy days when you are stopped somewhere and can’t do anything. 🙂
We do some of what DebM mentioned above but I have purchased a DVD player for our van. We watch Historical Movies ect…. We do Math U see for a video and I put their papers in a plastic accordian type file folder. It is color coded so I know which kid left their’s laying around. 🙂 It has a place for their Math, History paper to go with the movie(or coloring page). Sometimes a thin book for them to read for Literature or History. My daughter did her A,B,C flash cards. Number recognition folder for math, coloring pages and games that would stimulate the mind. We also used those Bop it math tables and spelling, games. I purchased a Geo Safari Laptop to do Geography and Science and a few other things. I think you could probably get by with one of those (depending on the ages of your children) and the DVD player for the educational movies. OH, I almost forgot! We also used a variety of tapes we played in the car. Grammar songs, History songs, Skip count, Bible songs, German ect… Our favorite song is “Washington’s Hat” Whenever someone would mention hats or Washington we all start singing… “Washington’s hat imagine that! Washington’s hat. And giggle. You could also give them a tape recorder to listen to the educational tapes also. These are all things we have done.
I use Sue Patrick’s Workbox system and that is where I got the idea for the file folders when we go places. You could look up some other ideas along the lines of her system to find more ideas to put in the accordian folder. you canthem off and put them in there.
Blessings! and have a fun time traveling and homeschooling!
Boy, you all are so dedicated! We just take time off to enjoy! LOL! We have read about the place we are going to or made a map..but other than that we don’t do any school during a trip!! I am a very bad teacher!!
We just use it as time to fellowship w/ one another and to enjoy time off w/ dad!
Kudos to you all! 🙂
Depends on how long the trip is. If its just a day or two, I am with 2flowerboys – just being alone together in enforced captivity in the car can create some great discussions 🙂 When we went to Alaska to commercial fish with Dad – different story. We were on a 47′ boat for 6 weeks so we had to take some stuff with us. Lots of historical DVD’s and lots of CM workbooks ( lol, can I use those 2 words in the same sentence?) from Queen Homeschool got us through. Sandi Queen developed a lot of her products of necessity because her son was in cancer treatment and she had to keep things going for the other kids. I am really grateful because, like a car, there isn’t much room on a fishing boat for tons of books. Everything for two kids had to fit in a single cupboard so we did a lot of improvising! Short trips?? Have fun!
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