Roadschooling is homeschooling on the road. I have also heard of a new term for traveling families, called “Worldschooling” which sounds pretty cool, but we are primarily traveling in a motorhome in the USA, so I will stick with Roadschooling. I love that we have the freedom to homeschool/roadschool our children. We actually homeschooled before we moved into the RV, and there are so many things I love about homeschooling in general. Homeschooling on the road is a bit different though, and as you might have guessed, roadschooling does come with its own set of challenges and benefits. In this blog post, I will give a general overview of How We Roadschool Our 5 Kids.
Logistics
Where does everybody sit? Where do we store our stuff? Is it too noisy in that small space? Obviously, we do not have a classroom in our RV that resembles the typical schoolroom, complete with 5 student desks and a large teacher’s desk at the front.
When we are parked, with the slides open, we have our two oldest children in the front part of the RV at the dinette, the next two are in the back bedroom at a folding table, our youngest is at a small folding table in the front. When we are driving, and our space is much more confined because the slides are closed, two kids are at the dinette, two are on the couch, and one is in the captain chair. Driving school days are a little more difficult, but a benefit is that it passes the time if we have to cover a lot of ground in one day.
One thing that is great about an RV is the storage space, I might not have a large storage closet, or a desk, or a filing cabinet, but I do have a ton of cabinets. In the large cabinet above our captain chairs, each child has a magazine holder where they store their workbooks. In a smaller cabinet towards the front, I store the answer keys, tests, and extra workbooks. In a lower cabinet below our tv, we store books, mostly smaller books for enjoyment. In our “basement” (the underneath storage of the RV) we keep our “filecabinet” (a large tote with our student records, extra answer keys and workbooks) I also keep a tote with extra books and a large tote full of art supplies. I have actually found myself saying “I’ll be right back, I have to go to the basement to get some score keys”. 🙂
Curriculum
I have been to homeschool conventions and been homeschooling long enough to know that there are enough curriculums out there to make your head spin. It can be a daunting decision. Some roadschoolers/homeschoolers don’t use a curriculum at all or use several and pick and choose different subjects. The beauty of homeschooling is that there are several ways to do it, and families can pick what works best for them.
We use the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum. Matt and I are familiar with this curriculum because we used it growing up in Christian Schools.
Here is what we love about it:
Flexible – This is a high priority for us, our schedule is not always the same. We aim to start at 9 and end at 3 every day. Some days, though, we sleep in because we were in a Revival service until 10pm. Some days, we are close to an amazing natural wonder or fantastic historical site, and so the 9-3 school day may be interrupted. ACE is flexible in that it is mastery-based, and the kids work at their own pace, so if they love to read, they might fly through their reading assignments, but if they struggle with math, they can take some more time with it.
Christian based – It is important to us that we raise our kids with Christian values. In each workbook(a full school year is 12 PACEs (workbooks) in each subject) the student memorizes a scripture and character trait. I love that the kids are not only learning excellent math and reading skills, they are also learning about compassion, respect, friendliness, tact, and patience – those are important life skills!
Simple – I don’t mean simple as in easy and not thorough, I mean simple as in it is easy to set goals and accomplish them. I am not naturally organized, so I love that this curriculum is laid out for us. We can easily see what each child needs to do and we can easily see what they might be struggling with. There isn’t anything wrong with large textbooks and writing down assignments on separate paper, but honestly, that system is very cumbersome for a small space, and we love the simplicity of these workbooks.
Exploration
The best for last! There is so much to see and so much to learn about! I love history, and it is so fun to be able to research the area we are in and tell the kids about it, and then go and see it for ourselves! Sometimes they are amazed at what they see, and other times they make comments like “I don’t get the big deal with this rock, mom” (Plymouth Rock).
There are so many beautiful natural sites around America, and it is wonderful to be able to experience these things first hand. There is a sense of awe and wonder that can only be felt, not described. Our world seems smaller the more we travel, and the influence this has had on our kids’ understanding of geography has been awesome.
Another benefit of exploring, that I underestimated, is how we have experienced other cultures. It is really interesting to meet people who live differently than you. To see that cold and hot are really relative terms, depending on what climate you are used to living in. To hear expressions, the way people talk from different areas, and to try new foods. These are all things that we couldn’t teach our children without experiencing it. I am forever grateful for these experiences.
Thank you for reading “How We Roadschool Our 5 Children”!
If you would like to find out more about our ministry, Kingdom Pursuit Ministries, go to www.kpministry.org