How We Homeschool Our Kids During Our Travels

We have a few other posts about it, but kids grow and our approach changes. So homeschooling (or worldschooling) for us is very fluid in our family. A lot of things change depending on where we are, how we are, what does and doesn’t work and the likes and dislikes of everyone.

I’ll try to tell you how it’s going on now.

We’ve been on the road for a year now and these last months were a bit strange. I got sick, we all had some degree of travel burnout, but we had a lot of stuff to do.

They’re mostly unschooled. It means that we let them follow their own interests, their own agenda, at their own pace, the way they want it. It also means that sometimes they do nothing at all (that we see), and sometimes they do so much we feel like telling them to slow down.

They teach each other so much! And they learn from each other – just as it should be. In the photo, Melissa is teaching Coral to play chess

If you have doubts about what unschooling is, you can try to read our other posts where I explain what it is.

But we had a few things we wanted them to do, like the videos, the posts, and a few online courses.

At the moment, Melissa is enrolled in a Creative Writing course and we’re all (except for Coral and Angelo) doing a Comic course.

The writing course was supposed to be for Melissa, but I ended up asking all of them (except for Coral) to do along and it’s been pretty fun to have them all learning together. It’s been pretty cool for me too.

The boys were playing Inka chess and discussing on changing History by making the Quechua (Peruvian indigenous people) win over the Spanish

They also write for their blog, and it’s here in case you’re interested. When they wrote for the World Trip Diaries, I used to do the revision and help them correct (I usually just pointed out what was wrong and they corrected themselves – it took at least 3 rounds of corrections before it was ok, though), but on this blog, I only do the revision if they ask me. If you read it, you’ll see a lot of mistakes and it’s fine – they will learn and correct themselves over time.

As for Maths, they aren’t doing anything specific at the moment, but we do money conversions, time zones, and basic money maths all the time. We also play games that use maths and they learn that way. These days, João is talking all about Fibonacci and it’s been fun to see him discover so much. Melissa says she hates maths but she’s becoming pretty quick to convert measurements (like °F in °C, meters in cm, and things like that).

Coral learned to do her laces and she was kind enough to help me with mine

José is more reluctant on directed learning, so we try to let him be as much as we can. With this writing course, he’s had a few meltdowns but we were able to give him time and take it back when he was better – and he did all his assignment in less than 20 minutes.

Coral is learning to write. She recognizes letters and numbers and knows the difference between them. She’s also been learning that there are different ways to write the same word (capital letters, cursive, etc). She can read her whole name and the first names of her family members. She’s drawing very well too. She’s been proving very capable of learning on her own. I don’t really know when, but she learned to tie her shoelaces, rinse her mouth after brushing her teeth, tying her own hair, braiding hair, and a lot more.

They were editing their videos here. Even Coral did one, but it’s not on the blog. haha

Geography, History, and Science are learned along the way. They’ve also understood the concepts of altitude, and its relation to the lack of oxygen, the temperature, and strength of the sun rays. They’ve learned more about South America than most schooled kids, I think. It’s way more than I knew when I was their age and I was a ‘good’ student. We’ve been talking a lot about wars, capitalism, socialism, communism and the countries that use which system (supposedly).

They’re also understanding Spanish when they hear it because they were almost always capable of reading and understanding it.

We talk about a lot of stuff, honestly, from the current affairs to atoms and I hope they’re learning – not only from me, but they do their researches too.

And we watch movies, we listen to music, we read books, we talk, see and experience the culture. We eat local food, we see the places, the locals, and I know they’ll carry a bit of it with them – be it what we deem important or not.

It changes, as I said at the beginning, so next month we’ll probably be doing something different.

This is Coral (5) making origami claws and boxes, and working the scissors like a pro

Do you have any other questions? Ask away!