Roadschooling Set-Up

I realize that I’ve been doing this blog for a little while and I haven’t really explained what roadschooling is, at least to our family, and how we do it. That’s partially because I have been building the airplane as I have been flying it, which leads to the next reason… my set-up just wasn’t ready to share.

Now that we have settled into sunny Florida for the winter and plan to be here for a few months, I was able to set-up a more permanent roadschooling site that I can share with you. It’s still not perfect as it is a work in progress, but it is much more than we had and it is serving us well!

Let me go back a little bit before I begin sharing though and explain our roadschooling situation. My husband, aka The Chicken Whisperer, travels across the country with his sponsors doing events, workshops, and lobbying for the chicken love across the nation. We started traveling about 5 years ago and we would go from hotel to hotel sometimes night to night. As you can imagine, when Caleb came along our single traveling suitcase turned into multiple suitcases, a pack & play, sheets, food bags, toy bags, diaper bags, etc. Not to mention a baby in tow. We would just about fill those luggage carts hotels provide to the top with things hanging off the sides. Picture moving all this stuff into a hotel room for one night and back out the next morning every day for five days or more. Let’s just say, NOT FUN! Every time we saw an RV driving down the road, we would dream about how it would be so nice to just pack our stuff one time and be done. Not to mention, have a place where Caleb could take a nap on site! Finally, this past December we picked out the RV we wanted, saved up our money (we don’t like to buy things on credit), and purchased our very own 24’ Coachman Spirit of America travel trailer. It was the biggest RV we could buy that our current SUV could pull and we didn’t want to buy another vehicle.

At first, as we traveled for Andy’s work, we’d also find a fun spot to stay for vacation when the work was done. Then, we started finding spots to stay longer. We recently just spent 3 months in the north Georgia mountains watching the leaves change colors. Now we are planning to stay in Florida for the next 4 – 5 months over the winter. I don’t miss the cold. Yes, I’m a wimp! We plan to head home to the farm house for spring after some work traveling, so we can plant our garden and experience some homeschool there.

So that is our story of how our journey began. Now, let’s take a look at how I’ve set up our roadschooling through pictures…

Our outside learning environment. I put an extra table cloth on the concrete pad in front of us to learn on. The table next to the camper is hiding 4 storage drawers.

 These 2 storage drawers hold mostly craft and office supplies.

 These 2 storage drawers hold a variety of learning materials. The first bin shown on the left holds the following.
1. Holiday materials - foam shapes, stockings, and Christmas hats.
2. Fine Motor, Sensory materials, and Containers
3. Clipboard, Dry erase boards, mirrors, magnifying glasses, and tweezers

The second bin shown on the right holds the following.
1. Shapes, Numbers, and Letters Activities: I have a variety of activities for each concept. I organized all the games and activities together in gallon ziplock pages. For example, in the letter bag I have Di-cut letters, magnetic letters, letter matching games, flashcards, etc...
2. Manipulatives, Puzzles, and Play Dough
3. Water toys, Balls, Blocks, Chalk, Shape Sorter, Gardening tools etc...

 

 These boxes stay inside the RV. The tub on the left holds most of the materials I will use for teaching for the week. On the top right, I have a bin that holds all my paper goodies. This isn't my favorite way to store it, but it's what I'm working with right now. On the bottom right, I have a bin of books that I switch out each time I go home, hot glue gun and glue sticks, lamination machine, and teacher idea books.

 Here's a sample activity that we did today. I filled a tub with water, shapes, blocks, Thanksgiving foam shapes, a boat and sponge. I also gave Caleb a muffin pan. He had fun transferring water to the muffin pan and pouring it back in, cleaning the toys with the sponges, and having the turkey go, "nite-nite" by covering him up with "blankets" = shapes. It was fun to watch him play and learn.

I hope you enjoyed getting to know more about our roadschooling journey. If you have any questions or want to share any suggestions from your own experiences, I'd love to see those in the comments! 

Learning Blessings,