Educating Your Children Whilst you Travel the World?

More and more families are choosing a life away from mainstream living and choosing to travel the world. As a blogger it’s something is see a lot and I can’t help but think it’s an incredible way to live. Whether you’re driven by a desire to spend more time with your children or escape the 9-5 culture a growing number of parents are throwing in the towel and taking the children out of school for their own adventures.

Whether it’s taking six months, a year or indefinitely travelling the world I can’t help but think how much it can shape your children positively. I find holidays in general and visiting other countries and cultures installs so much into them that you just can’t recreate in a classroom, for example;

Makes them interested in geography, gives them a better understanding of their environment and the knowledge it’s a big world out there. They become interested in learning the capitals of different countries and being able to look at and use maps. It’s a great life skill to develop at a young age.
Open’s them up to different languages, my own daughter is busy picking up new phrases in French for our summer holiday.
Teaches them diversity, that we are all the same. Children seem to have the ability to make friends wherever they go, despite language barriers, race, background. It’s such a beautiful thing to witness.

However, if you’re thinking of making your adventures more of a permanent feature and you decide to take them completely out of school then you will need to create a plan for covering more formal elements of learning.

Homeschooling and travel offer a lot of families freedom, they can create their own curriculum depending on location, events and schedule. As a teacher myself, this would be pure gold and can’t even begin to imagine what a positive impact it would have on the learner.

So practically how can this be done if you’re travelling light?

Despite having own classroom full of “stuff”, you wouldn’t actually need much in the way of equipment if you’re educating whilst travelling. I would imagine a laptop/tablet with internet would be vital but your travel locations should be your classrooms. Imagine being able to teach photography and composition whilst on safari or about animal adaptations whilst in a desert? I hate the thought of wasting lots of paper that you inevitably can’t take with you, so perhaps getting a mini teaching whiteboard could be ideal.

Of course, if you’re in one location for a longer period of time enrolling in an international school for a term or hiring a tutor. A tutor seems to be popular amongst travellers because of the flexibility, you could be having home tuition in Singapore in the morning then out exploring after lunch.

Your Childs education really does not have to suffer if you decide to live this way of life. It may take some organising and patience but the impact it can have is incredible.

Is this something you would do if you could?

K Elizabeth xoxox