10 Homeschooling Hacks for Traveling Families
Are you homeschooling on the road or maybe thinking about it? I know several homeschooling families who live in an RV full-time, which brings its own joys and challenges. You’ll want to check out these homeschooling hacks for traveling families from guest writer, Zaneta.
Simultaneously managing being both a parent and a teacher comes with its challenges. It’s fairly easy to designate one room in your house and fill it with everything possible to engage your children in active learning. There is also a multitude of resources for parents that homeschool their children, but what about families with a home that moves on a constant basis and has virtually no storage? In this post, we explore some of the more-known and lesser-known (and often free) tools to enhance your school on the road.
10 Homeschooling Hacks for the Traveling Family
#1: Audiobooks and e-Books
Purchasing books in electronic form can become very expensive. It’s also impossible to get a library card in each state while on the road. Plus, print books take up a great deal of space that needs to be reserved for living essentials. Libby (e-books) and Hoopla (audio books) are both great apps you can likely access with your public library card; all you need is your library card number to create an account. Some e-book reading apps will also allow your kids to make notes within the app, mark page numbers, and annotate the content with comments. Audiobooks are also an excellent way to build your child’s auditory learning style, which children will definitely need when they get to college.
#2: Contact Homeschooling Support Groups in each State
Traveling with your kids is wonderful family time; however, your children need to associate with other children to build their social skills. Many homeschooling associations that are on a national level provide ways to connect with other families. One example is the National LDS Homeschooling Association. Their website has an interactive map showing support groups all over the nation. If you know you will be traveling to another state (and staying there for a bit), contact the group coordinator a few weeks ahead of time and make arrangements to share resources and let the kids interact.
#3: Join Meetup Groups
If you aren’t comfortable with utilizing a national homeschooling association or using an association with religious affiliations, using the Meetup app may be a great way to find family-oriented groups in various cities across the US. The app lets users search for groups based on category (family, learning, etc.) and location. You can search for any location across the US no matter where you are. Many of the family groups attend local kid-friendly events that would complement your unit studies quite well. Some categories may also complement your unit studies, even if it is an adult group. Quantity is not always equal to quality either; some groups may have hundreds of members, but only a few families are truly active. We recommend contacting the group organizers ahead of time to connect.
#4: Those Millions of Brochures at State Welcome Centers
You’ve seen them, and you remember them from your childhood. Brochures were the only entertainment while waiting for the other members of the group to finish using the restroom. When you cross a state line, stop at the visitor’s center and start your collection. These brochures, like the internet, are a great resource to find places in each state that may complement your unit studies. But, in the spirit of recycling, the bright colors and slick paper also make excellent collage materials for kids of any age.
#5: National and State Park Educational Programs
The National Parks Service has a HUGE database of learning materials and lesson plans created just for you: the educator. The database allows you to search by keyword, subject, grade level, and even common core code. Then you can filter the results by location. In addition to national parks, states also independently manage their own websites, so hopping on the state park site for each state is a great resource to find educational programs offered at each park. Each state park site will likely have a menu option of learn or programs; here is an example for the state parks of Florida. What better way to make learning come alive than to visit a park after, or even during, a lesson.
#6: Museums and Historic Sites
The US is home to over 35,000 museums. Not sure where to start? The American Alliance of Museums provides a database of museums that you can search by name, city, state, and type. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is another amazing resource that provides information by state. If admission isn’t publicized as free, as most of the museums in Washington D.C. are, you can probably show your homeschooling association membership card, and the entire family can get in for free. It doesn’t hurt to ask!
#7: Real World Math
In a typical public school math classroom, many teachers are limited to wonky and impractical word problems (two trains leave the station…) or using specific manipulatives such as dice or colored plastic pieces of various shapes and sizes. Many students struggle in math because it just doesn’t seem real. I’m sure that when you travel, the need for practical math skills comes into play on a daily basis: gas mileage and cost of gas, measuring for cooking, changing tax rates as you cross state lines, time management, etc. It’s amazing how much math is around us when our environment constantly changes. Engage your children in the real world of math by having them do the calculations.
#8: Changing Climates and Ecology
The US is an ecologically diverse country. In some cases, a single state has multiple ecosystems. Oregan, for example, has nine types of ecosystems alone. Along with each ecosystem comes unique weather patterns, rock formations, animal species, and plants. While traveling, you have a giant science lab in your backyard.
#9: Volunteer
There’s a large network of non-profit agencies in the US fighting national social issues like hunger and homelessness, as well as local social issues like creative ways to address waste management problems and serve the local veteran population. Volunteering can help your child grow in so many ways: developing socialization skills, raising cultural awareness, fostering empathy, building self-efficacy, developing new skills, and exploring specific interests. An excellent source to find volunteer opportunities suitable for kids in communities across the nation is volunteermatch.org. Whether you are looking for one-day events or long-term experiences while staying put for a few weeks or months, this website will connect you with just about every type of opportunity there is for you and your children.
#10: Digital Storytelling
Be sure to invest in a wifi hotspot; if you don’t have consistent and reliable access to the internet, you are cutting yourself off from a world of limitless information and resources. One teaching and learning tool that is taking K-12 and higher education by storm is digital storytelling.
The University of Houston describes digital stories as “containing some mixture of computer-based images, text, recorded audio narration, video clips, and/or music. Varying in length between two and 10 minutes, topics range from personal tales to the recounting of historical events, from exploring life in one’s own community to the search for life in other corners of the universe, and literally, everything in between.”
You can view examples of digital stories on the UCLA-Berkeley StoryCenter website. The best news is that there are so many free, creative desktop applications that can help your kids learn by connecting various content from multiple sources. Creating digital stories will help build the life-long learning skill of connecting information to communicate ideas.
Homeschooling on the Road
Some of these hacks may have already been in your family’s toolbelt as a traveling school, but we hope some of the resources we provided are new to you and all of the other juggling parents out there, even those that aren’t constantly on the go.
About the Author
Zaneta is a Research Specialist and Writer for carinsurancecomparison.com and autoinsurance.org. Writing and research have been an integral component of her studies in anthropology, instructional technology, technical and professional communication, and adult education. A mountain biker-turned-paddler, she lives in Greenville, SC with her spouse, 12-year-old daughter, three lizards, and two Dachshunds.
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