if you camp and school at the same time....

[ProudGrandma]

how does it look for you?  I mean...do you do the full load?  How do you do it?  What part does your husband play? etc.

 

we have a smaller, hybrid (or expandable) camper and there are 5 of us total...my 3 kids, my husband and I.

 

we tried this once...and because it's getting cooler now, it was too chilly (and breezy) to do school outside...so we were all 5 jammed in the camper....and I felt sort of closed in...also trying to make breakfast on top of it all....

 

so I was just curious if others do it and how it works for you.

 

thanks.

[skimomma]

We do.  But I only have one kid and we are usually in a small tent.  It is also too cold here for doing school outside.  We typically focus on individual work so dd can go into the tiny tent by herself and get some work done while also resting and warming up.  We do not do a full load.  Usually just Latin and math.  We camp frequently this time of year so this is the compromise between.  Our normal school day is about 5 hours whereas she might only do 2 while camping.  It is messy for sure.  School stuff all over the tent.  

[Anne]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to do schoolwork while you're camping?   Unless I was camping for weeks at a time, I would never attempt to do schoolwork at the same time.   It's supposed to be fun - maybe educational in an outdoors sort of way...   The only exception would be if someone had to bring work along to complete because she hadn't completed it when she was supposed to.....

 

Anne

[Jean in Newcastle]

How long and how often?  And what are the ages of the kids?

[skimomma]

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to do schoolwork while you're camping?   Unless I was camping for weeks at a time, I would never attempt to do schoolwork at the same time.   It's supposed to be fun - maybe educational in an outdoors sort of way...   The only exception would be if someone had to bring work along to complete because she hadn't completed it when she was supposed to.....

 

Anne

 

We do because we have been camping for part of every week for the last month.  We can only take off so many days before we lose momentum or get very behind.  Plus dd is in an online class that does not stop for camping trips.  She has to study daily for it, even when camping.  If it were a one-time thing, we would not bother.

[EndOfOrdinary]

We homeschooled for two of the four and a half months my son and I hiked the PCT.  We had to if we were going to keep our charter school funding. Reading aloud happened every night.  Spelling happened every morning.    We did foreign language while we walked.  I could not carry the weight of the books, so I did photocopies and put them into our mail drops.  These would be done as we walked our miles for the day.  Most everything can be done orally - even math.  It was a situation where our family had to adapt to the idea of these subjects being done differently.  So maybe you take the work you have covered earlier and you discuss it over the days which are camping.  Maybe you take the math and turn the concept into mental math.  Maybe you turn history into discussing the implications of what you have studied.  Science can easily be done in the natural environment. 

 

If you wanted to set aside a chunk of the day to be quiet study time, that would work as well.  Since we were long distance backpacking, there was not much down time.  Car camping can have this be done.  Just take two hours and have them be quiet time.  It could easily become formal "study time."

 

My husband was not with us - he is a school teacher.  So when school was out, he joined us.  At that point, we no longer had to school.