What is Roadschooling?

Roadschooling means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Just as one homeschool experience is different from another, roadschool experiences vary like the moods of a two year old (I should know… I’ve got one).

While roadschooling parents choose curriculum, methods, and styles of teaching like homeschooling parents, the main difference is that roadschooling parent are… well… on the road, not just for a short period of time (like going on a vacation or taking a field trip), but on a longer journey or possibly even as their full-time lifestyle. What makes roadschooling different from homeschooling is that in large part, the family’s adventures on the road are what shape their education. Instead of just reading about historical sites, they see, touch, and absorb history first-hand from these sites. While students in traditional classrooms are learning about landforms from pictures and 3D models, roadschoolers take walks through deserts, hike to the tops of various mountains, pick flowers from grassland plains, and maybe even rock climb to the top of a plateau. While a homeschooling family might make a lapbook about caves, but never see one because there aren’t any nearby, a roadschooler might go spelunking to see first-hand the path of water drops as they drip down stalactites and stalagmites as well as animal inhabitants of the cave. While not all roadschoolers have these specific learning adventures, there’s an endless supply of learning experience possibilities while on the road that you just can’t experience at home or in the classroom.

These are just a few of the experiences we've enjoyed this year...

There are days where roadschooling and homeschooling might look very similar. While roadschoolers often have frequent experiences like the ones mentioned above, most people have “classroom” days too. Books are read, crafts are created, lapbooks are constructed, and SHHHHHHHHhhhhhh… a worksheet may even be completed.

Even though all roadschooling families have this mobile commonality, the differences of how this is done vary widely. Some families bike across the country, while others travel in their cars and stay in hotels across the nation. Other families camp out in tents at various state parks, while others enjoy the comforts that recreational vehicles offer. Some families travel around a state, while others a country, and others fly, bike, take train rides, and more around the world. With roadschooling, the possibilities are limitless.

The reasons people choose this method of schooling also vary. Obviously, if you’re traveling, you can’t keep your kids in public school, so schooling your own child is the only way to go. Some families travel just to get away from all the hustle and bustle of leading a traditional lifestyle. The tiny house movement and being debt free are also strong incentives for some, while other families choose it for the broad experiences traveling gives their children. Sometimes a family member travels a great deal for work, leading them into the nomadic lifestyle. While there are many other reasons, the last one is what led our family to the road. You can read more about why we roadschool and check out Our(stationary) Roadschooling Set-up by clicking the image below.

My goal for writing about this topic is not to sell you on roadschooling your children or to prove that roadschooling will give your child the best education, but rather to enlighten you about its existence. There are a large number of families hitting the road and the number increase daily and yet it’s not a well-known or well-accepted way of living. Once a family sells their home or moves out of an apartment to live in an RV, skip from hotel room to hotel room, or camp in a tent, they are considered “poor” and “homeless” by the world. The saddest part to me is that families have had their children taken away from them because there are ignorant people in this world that won’t accept this lifestyle as a way people can appropriately raise their children.

I’m grateful that my friends and family have been supportive in our decision, but there are many who venture out into the world without this support system, with the people who love them most disapproving of their choice.

My friends, this is a choice, just like you might choose to live in a larger house or decide to downsize to a smaller house or apartment. It may not be something you would consider for yourself, but if you have a friend or family member that mentions they are interested, be supportive. Love them and keep them in your prayers. It’s not an easy decision to make for most. Venturing out to do something new and unknown is scary, but living on the road isn’t something anyone should look down on. Wonderful experiences will create memories that will last a life time for your whole family!

God Bless You on Your Learning Journey ~
 

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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,

 

Bad Days are Learning Days Too...

Not every day is a good day… that said, we all need a few bad days to appreciate the good ones.

Today started off good enough, Caleb woke everyone up at 8 a.m. as usual, I fixed breakfast, and then we began homeschooling activities. I always start off with some gross motor activity and today we went for a walk around the RV park while Caleb pushed Lily Anne in the stroller down and back up the mountainous hills where we are. We ate lunch and went back outside for more schooling while Daddy, also known as the Chicken Whisperer® did his podcast at the picnic table from under the awning. I drew 5 pumpkins on the drive near our car and wrote the numbers 1 – 5 in the pumpkins. You can see more about this activity by clicking the picture below and reading about it from my Facebook post for our FALL FUN Activity share.

We also did some activities which I will share more about in a post later using Touch Math. After that, I took Caleb and Lily Anne up to the swing. We brought some of Caleb’s toys like a shovel, pail, dump truck, and car because there are rocks there he likes to play with. When I came back home to put Caleb and Lily Anne down for a nap, I noticed water leaking out of both sides of the door to the RV. I opened the door and WOOOOSH! The water rushed out the door onto the patio. I ran inside to see what was going on and found the bath tub full and overflowing. Water was about an inch deep on the camper floor. I quickly turned the water off and yelled outside to Andy who was talking to our neighbors. Andy had turned the tub on to help flush our tanks and went back outside waiting for it to fill and fill it DID! The Whole Camper! Our neighbors watched Lily Anne and Caleb while we took towels trying to dry the floors. An hour later, we felt we had most of the water up. We had to pull everything out of the cabinets and turn the air conditioning on full blast as well as a box fan to help dry what we couldn’t get because as you can imagine water and RVs do NOT go together. Water is the biggest destructive force an RV can tangle with causing mold as well as weak and rotting floors among other things. Daddy went to Walmart to get some DampRid that we also put under the cabinets to absorb the water we can’t get to. Fingers are crossed that we don’t have any more problems arise from this event, but only time will tell.

Everyone has a bad day. At some point, mistakes are made, but life goes on. The most important thing to remember is that all of these situations are learning opportunities for us as adults to practice handling our stress in appropriate ways, trying to make the best out of bad situations and figuring out how to make better choices in the future. More importantly, these are learning opportunities for our children too. They see how we handle problems in our lives with our language, our attitude, our emotions, and our spirit. It’s an amazing time right now watching my toddler develop. I see how he imitates my husband and me on a daily basis. I want to be a better person for him. I want him to learn to accept his mistakes without beating himself up, be able to problem solve quickly to figure out a solution to whatever may arise, and forgive others that make mistakes that affect him. For him to be able to do this, we have to model these behaviors for him. Overall, I think we did a good job today as we dried water for corners and cracks we laughed, we rallied together to get the job done, and we forgave the innocent mistake.

Just remember, when you’re having a bad day… Bad Days are Learning Days too.  

God Bless,

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