International Travel Schooling?

[sophmama]

Have you done it or wish you could? Where would you go? Madagascar? Europe? Third World? the Serengeti?

Would you take curriculum with you and cover other topics or is it possible to cover "everything" via travel? (Obviously some people think of baking cookies as a solid amount of science and economics and some do not, so "everything" has a very broad range of definition for different people.)

[cloudswinger]

My dd6 and I are going to Vietnam for 3 weeks in Jan-Feb, so we're going to continue our schooling on the road. I'm keeping it simple and light, so not bringing any curriculum/books, plus I want to bring some books home from Vietnam as that is our second language. Along the way, we should be working on geography, world culture/history, math(shopping with 6-7 digit math since the lowest denomination starts at 500,000), art, music, writing, reading in both languages and maybe a little Japanese on the way. I think the only subject not covered is science, but I'm sure I can figure something out there too. Maybe earth sciences - the geology around Ha long bay is unique, also our model volcano was of Mt Fuji, which would be cool to see in real life.

We'll probably keep travel journals, writing and drawing as we go along. I'll probably go to a bookstore near the end and buy some of the school books - they sell the school books at the book store, they don't provide books at school, and so if you can't afford books, you can't really go to school. On the other hand, I think the curriculum is standardized across the country, since it's still communist and they do that sort of thing.

I'd like to do the Mediterranean, Turkey and Egypt after we finish our ancient history sequence. It would be cool to see the Acropolis and all the other neat places. Another cool trip would be Stonehenge and Lasceaux for our prehistory followup.

More likely is that we'll go to Dinosaur Monument National Park, since we're dinosaur crazy right now.

[momtokea]

We travel a lot with our kids for our vacations. We spent six weeks in Greece a few years ago travelling most of the countryside and taking in all the sites and visiting relatives (mine).

A couple of years ago we spent two weeks in Italy ... Rome, Florence, and Venice and some of the countryside. Our ancient history studies have been very complete and plenty of art appreciation! We still have Egypt on the list for "some day".

Last year we spent two weeks in England and Scotland. Lots of time in London, Oxford, Bath, Stonehenge, Lochness, the actual steam train from Harry Potter, and more castles than I can possibly mention -- the Middle Ages come to life, and also plenty of ancient history in places like Bath and Stonehenge.

This year we spent a few days in Dover and Canterbury England and then cruised up to Denmark, Northern Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland and Sweden.

We have been to many different places in Canada and the US.

We have a time-share and transfer our points to use in hotels in Europe. We also use air-miles through our credit cards for cheap flights. Our entire trip for two weeks in Italy cost less than $5000 for the five of us. Our accomodation was completely free through our time share and we found a "one day sale" for cheap flights through our local newspaper and used our air-miles.

We study every country we visit, mostly by just reading and researching and learning while we are there. We book tours with tour guides who teach us everything we need to know.

I use this website to get book ideas: www.travelforkids.com

ETA: we do not take any books with us except for travel books for the places we are visiting, and our own 'reading for pleasure' books. We do not take any curriculum, but this is just travelling for vacation, not permanent travelling for extended periods of time. If we ever travel for an extended period of time during the school year, I would probably consider taking math with us.

[JuniperBCN]

My kids are really little still, but I can't wait to do this to the best of our ability! I wasn't homeschooled, but my grandparents pulled me from school two weeks a year to visit a different European country each time. It was always the same set-up- rent a van (there were always 4 grandchildren) and rent a house/apartment in one or two places, see sights, shop in local markets, swim at local beaches and pools, visit parks, etc. Beyond reading about where we were going and learning to say please/thank-you/hello in the language of where we were going, we never did anything else and I learned sooooooo much! It still impacts my life and worldview on a daily basis.

I live in Spain now and dream of visiting friends all around and travelling in our van as much as employment/funds exist. Started drooling today when I realised the high speed train will have us in France in under an hour in a few years, jumped for joy when friends bought a house in Kenya. Go, go, go and leave the curriculum at home. I would lead up to travels with some prep and springboard off of them when home again, but would not let external stuff get in the way of the experience and make sure to include time for doing some regular "daily" stuff with locals or contact homeschool groups where possible....

[mom2ponygirl]

Check this out for high school - http://thinkglobalschool.org/
Really cool, except for the price!

[Kristin0105]

Oh, if I could afford to travel yes I would start out and cover as much of Europe as possible, then move onto Russia, Asia, Egypt, Africa. Come back in time for DD to go to college I was just talking to DH about the possibility of his working out of state for brief periods so we could travel with him. If we could do that throughout Europe? Oh what fun!

[zh97]

We are leaving for Amsterdam in 5 months to begin an open ended (1+ years) roadtrip through Europe which will include parts of Northern Africa. It will be me with my 4 kiddos. There are a slew of logistics to work out and we will be camping with the van and travel trailer for the majority of it.

I get very excited at all the possibilities this holds for my kids. We are preparing right now by learning languages and downsizing to live in MUCH smaller quarters. My daughter is making lists of places she hopes to visit and reading/ watching movies situated in those areas.

I'd say go for it! From my research it turns out to be a lot more affordable than I would have ever thought. I guess I can't say for sure until we have actually been on the road for any length of time, but camping is really quite an affordable way to go from the looks of it, in Europe anyways.

[crittersmum]

Now there's a blog I'd love to read, zh97!

One of the mama's on MDC had a terrific blog about sailing around the world with her little guy. Naturally, I lost the link, but think of the possibilities!