Schooling on the road, please take a look at my plan.

[dsmith]

We are going to be traveling for the next 3 - 5 weeks, and I want to pack as lightly as possible but still get some schooling done. We school over the summer, so I'm not overly concerned about falling behind or not getting enough done. Ds doesn't do well with long breaks without schooling though, especially with math. I'm bringing all of our math books, so that will be done on days we don't have any major sightseeing or traveling going on. We are studying Ancient Greece and Rome this year for history, and I have Book of the Ancient Greeks by Dorothy Mills in ebook format from Memoria Press. I may just snap some photos of a few chapters in the workbook and let him type answers in Pages on the iPad. I also did the early bird registration of Heritage History Academy and got the Ancient Greece online course for free. This seems to include a ton of books (Geurber, Haaren, etc.) along with maps, study questions and tests. I was able to download a few of the required books to my iPad, and the rest of the site seems accessible on the iPad or laptop. For science, I'm going to put aside RSO Biology 2 until we get back. I purchased a book called Core Ideas in Life Science from the Apple bookstore. It has animations and videos, a glossary, quizzes, comprehension questions, etc. I saw a good amount of typos, but overall I think it looks pretty good and ds will enjoy reading it. For writing, we've been slowly adding ideas from Bravewriter, so we will continue with that. We've just started learning German using various apps and Rosetta Stone on the laptop, so we will continue with that, but I'm not going to bring any Latin with us. I made flashcards for what we've learned so far, so we will review. We will watch various programs on Discovery Streaming as time permits, but I think that is all I'm bringing. So basically all I need to pack is our math books. Does this sound like a reasonable amount of work while traveling? Is there anything I should add?

[jar7709]

That looks ok to me!  Where are you going on your trip?  We recently returned from a 3-week road trip, which was largely educational anyway, so we did a lot of unschooling. :coolgleamA:   Addtionally, the kids had educational apps and audiobooks they enjoyed on long boring internet stretches, they also liked making quick movies along the way.  We also read books that tied in with what we were seeing, and the kids keep 'travel journals' to record things they see and interesting bits.  Instead of souvenirs at *every* stop, I let them pick out postcards at each place, which they taped into their journals and could add notes if they liked.  We didn't bring math books, but my kids are younger and have pretty good retention so that was not a biggie for us, they got enough practice with some of the math facts apps in the car. 

 

One tip I might add-- my kids do a lot better and have fewer battles over writing in their travel journals if they see that DH and I are doing the same.  If we keep it light and as an 'optional' thing, they actually write more, and more happily.  Just my $0.02.  :)

[2_girls_mommy]

We always do travel journals for trips too.  They end up covering science and nature and history and different things.  The kids write about what we did. They follow our trips on the map.  They pick up brochures and learn about the plant life and look for that on our site seeing, etc.  And it is writing, of course.  We require them to write in them daily if possible.

[CrunchyGirl]

We travel a lot for work via fifth wheel staying at campsites across the US. We travel 8-12 weeks a year (over 2-3 big trips and then of course fun camping weekends during the summer). I'm still working on my system for schooling on the road. I didn't stress last year since we school 6 days a week year round and it was only kindergarten. I have better plans for next year ;)

 

The one thing I wanted to bring up is that it can be very difficult to stream when you travel. I own a web based company so I spend a lot of time online when we are traveling. Very few campsites (and we have stayed at probably close to 100) have truly decent internet and most will kick you off if they see that someone is using a lot of bandwidth (streaming). I do have Verizon cell internet (I use my iPhone as a hotspot). I use this a lot when I need to get online for email or to manage my website but it's VERY expensive to use for streaming--I wouldn't recommend it.

[dsmith]

We are going to Great Wolf in Sandusky with my sister and niece, and then on to a conference in Tennessee. Dh has meetings in Dallas, TX and one or two somewhere in Virginia. Our trip is planned out from home to Dallas, but we aren't sure which way we are coming home yet. That has me a little nervous, lol. I love the idea of a travel journal! I think I have a moleskine type notebook in a cool green color that ds will like. I would enjoy doing one too. Thanks for the suggestions!

That looks ok to me!  Where are you going on your trip?  We recently returned from a 3-week road trip, which was largely educational anyway, so we did a lot of unschooling. :coolgleamA:   Addtionally, the kids had educational apps and audiobooks they enjoyed on long boring internet stretches, they also liked making quick movies along the way.  We also read books that tied in with what we were seeing, and the kids keep 'travel journals' to record things they see and interesting bits.  Instead of souvenirs at *every* stop, I let them pick out postcards at each place, which they taped into their journals and could add notes if they liked.  We didn't bring math books, but my kids are younger and have pretty good retention so that was not a biggie for us, they got enough practice with some of the math facts apps in the car. 

 

One tip I might add-- my kids do a lot better and have fewer battles over writing in their travel journals if they see that DH and I are doing the same.  If we keep it light and as an 'optional' thing, they actually write more, and more happily.  Just my $0.02.  :)

 

[dsmith]

I would love to camp across the country, but ds would hate it, lol. Dh will be doing a fair amount of work (we have a web based business also) while traveling and needs internet, so it's hotels for us. :001_smile: We have one Verizon hotspot and another with Sprint. We decided during Sandy that we needed double coverage. On one of our trips last year, we didn't pay much attention to how much ds was streaming with Verizon, and we had $100 extra in data charges. I must have disabled the notifications or something. It was a bit of a shock, as I had already increased the data plan substantially for the duration of the trip. 

 

I always make plans for schooling on the road, but we usually get half of what I plan done. It's really the math I'm most concerned about, so I'll be happy if that gets consistently done.

 

 

We travel a lot for work via fifth wheel staying at campsites across the US. We travel 8-12 weeks a year (over 2-3 big trips and then of course fun camping weekends during the summer). I'm still working on my system for schooling on the road. I didn't stress last year since we school 6 days a week year round and it was only kindergarten. I have better plans for next year ;)

The one thing I wanted to bring up is that it can be very difficult to stream when you travel. I own a web based company so I spend a lot of time online when we are traveling. Very few campsites (and we have stayed at probably close to 100) have truly decent internet and most will kick you off if they see that someone is using a lot of bandwidth (streaming). I do have Verizon cell internet (I use my iPhone as a hotspot). I use this a lot when I need to get online for email or to manage my website but it's VERY expensive to use for streaming--I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Mom-ninja.]

We're going in vacation for 4.5 weeks and I'm not taking any school books. This is our vacation and time off. :hurray:   I might have the kids dabble a bit on Khan Academy and they have a travel journal but that's it. Besides it'll be total foreign language submersion so my kids will need their brain power for that.

[RoundAbout]

We've been on the road for 3 months now, though my DS is much younger than yours so I'm not sure how much direct advice I have. The main thing is that I am just super consistent with the basics. Math and writing are scheduled every day. They usually get bumped a few times per week because of activities, bringing us down to a more normal 5 day schedule, but if it I didn't plan for everyday we'd be doing a lot less.

 

A pleasant surprise, is that my son's reading has taken off dramatically on the road, and he's now finishing a chaper book a week. I attribute this to having fewer distractions in the evening (we only have 1 small box of Lego toys) and switching exclusively to the Kindle. The ability to set print size and line spacing on the Kindle and have a constant stream of high interest materials has been key for us, but probably not as big a deal for a 13 year old.

 

We just unschool science right now since part of our trip included a month of camping in National Parks with ranger talks and tours, and another part includes access to world class museums.

 

Have fun! We plan to travel until March and are having a blast.