Learning While Traveling - Travel Homeschool - Road School Abroad: 5 Best Reasons

Travel and learning enhance and support each other like a world field trip. Another school year begins and we all think about education for our children.

I've written extensively about homeschooling abroad or world schooling, how we learn as we travel, advantages of the global student, how and why to raise a global kid , how to raise a multilingual child, writing in Spanish, friends on our ultimate family adventure  and more, so obviously I have passion on this topic.

" The world is getting smaller and there is no better education for our global citizens of the 21st century than world travel"

Every morning in Barcelona, like this photo above, our child does her homeschool in Mandarin and Singapore Math etc, out under the trees with a sea view. She does mostly self led learning, often with books she enjoys or websites or educational CD's we find or her electronic dictionary,  but we guide her and she has also been working with her Dean of Studies from her Mandarin school in Asia and music teachers online via free webcams.

Learning benefits of a global experience go far beyond the formal book learning aspects as some of it  is just by osmosis like playing with friends in Spanish,  visiting museums as a family  or even shopping abroad in different currencies and metric system.



Having been doing this now for going on 6 years with a school age child ( from 5 to 11 years) while traveling slowly to 42 countries on 5 continents ( on just $23/day per person)  and as monolinguals raising a kid fluently reading, writing and speaking Mandarin, Spanish and English, I don't know of anyone with more experience on this topic.

But I don't say do it our way, but find your OWN way as there are endless ways to do this. We found many ways to add a global perspective before we ever left home. I think more than ever in our fast changing world, we must all find new ways to educate our children to prepare them for the future. I don't have all the answers and am still learning, but I can tell you about what has worked for us as some of the rewards are already obvious.


BEST REASONS TO HOME EDUCATE USING TRAVEL

1) FREEDOM, TIME TOGETHER, LEARNING BY DOING

2) EASIEST AND CHEAPEST WAY TO LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE

3) HANDS ON LEARNING OTHER CULTURES AND LIVING HISTORY

4) MORE TIME IN NATURE

5) GREATER ADAPTABILITY, CREATIVITY  AND GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING


Do you use travel at home or abroad to enhance your homeschool or child's education? What are your best reasons? What areas about our global education would you like us to discuss more?

 

 

Comments

[libithina]

Hi you lovely three another great posting ~ said it before Jean but young mistress Motzart will do amazing things when older seeing reading and experiencing hands on ~ history and places really come alive for her ~ I love sharing along with you guys ~ enjoy all of your posts kind of armchair travelling for me ~ love it ~ can I ask what have been your favorite places up to now and where do you want to go to that you have not been yet ~ that was a lovely cottage you had ~ but what a rich life you lead ~ waving Hi back Motzart and to you all hugs Lib xx

[Haley Porter]

I love the idea of home schooling while traveling the world. What an amazing opportunity! Our company E3 Imagine is traveling the world making children's books with real photographs. There is so much to learn from all of the beautiful children around the world and this is our way of trying to create "unity" for all children.

[Mikayla B]

Awesome!

[Marlana]

Sums it up for me!!!

[Elizabeth]

Love this post! As I mentioned before, we would love our little one to be trilingual. Mozart is such an inspiration to us, as are you two! Can you recommend any good books for kids on learning Mandarin? PS Love the shot from Cambridge; that's where my family is from :)

[Jeanne @soultravelers3]

Thanks so much Lib, you are so sweet and we are very happy to have you armchair traveling...er travelling...along with us! ;)

So hard to pick fave places ..like picking a fave child..they are all special in their own way. Morocco and Bhutan stand out because they were so different, but we are partial to Spain, France and Italy for the beauty food and culture, Croatia was lovely, Greece...especially Santorini.. divine except in August, Turkey exciting, adored Sweden and Norway's Fjords, always love Paris, SF, NYC and London in the Sun, Big Sur is one of my dream spots, Jordan was a delightful surprise,Kauai, Moorea and Bora Bora were heaven etc etc off the top of my head.

We want to do more explorations of Asia this year, especially China, Bali, Fiji and India. We're really interested in exploring South America ( I've been to Brazil) but haven't had time to fit it in and central America too. Also Africa is high on our list. I still want to do more islands around Europe like Corsica, Sardinia, Majorca etc

Sending boomerang hugs back!

[Jeanne @soultravelers3]

Haley - sounds like a great idea! When Mozart was a baby I loved the picture books that brought other cultures to her.

[Jeanne @soultravelers3]

Thanks a bunch Mikayla and Marlana! Good minds think alike! ;)

[Jeanne @soultravelers3]

Thanks Elizabeth for your kind words and support! So happy that our example can inspire and help others.

There are sooo many resources for Mandarin online and off ( Since Chinese mom's world wide want their kids to learn it). Just Google. We've always used a large variety. If you ever come into Penang you could load up with a boat load for cheap.

The keys for young children is expose, expose, expose them..every day. I don't really like dvd's/TV for kids, but we always did a little, but ONLY in Spanish and Mandarin.

One of Mozart's assignments every day is to watch some Mandarin and Spanish. There are some fun things in Mandarin on Youtube too for kids. Perhaps I should do a post on things we have used and liked..but we are on the move now and it will take time to gather them all.

[Lisa Wood]

I love homeschooling our boys with free schooling. Like you - we give our boys the books they need to learn, and then we let them choose when to learn, what to learn and when to have it all finished by. Children learn more from the "Real World" then they ever do from school systems!
Cheers
Lisa

[Jackie]

Wow! I would love to be in your place right now. What a fun way to educate.

We use an online resource for homeschoooing (Time4Learning) and they have a neat parent forum. I noticed they just added a new sub-forum, "road schoolers" (http://www.time4learning.net/forum/roadschoolers/)to the categories. While it's not exactly learning abroad, it is learning while traveling. Life offers so much if we will just reach out and grab it.

Best wishes on your school year.

Joyfully,
Jackie
www.quaintscribbles.wordpress.com

[Dee]

I am rather interested in homeschooling while traveling - in fact, next year my family will be going abroad for a year and we are looking at options for homeschooling (or local school) for our two school aged daughters. With that being said, do you used a home school program such as k12 or another cirriculum?

[leticia]

This is so wonderful! I would love to homeschool my kids (ages: 6, 8, 13) while abroad in Mexico for 1 year. What's the impact on their schooling when they return to US schools? Since I assume this is your own curriculum? Just wondering...thanks!

[Jeanne @soultravelers3]

Dee - sounds great! We just made up our own and have more of an unschool or eclectic approach. It's worked great for us, Mozart was able to skip 3 grades again when we went to Asia for Chinese and at 13 when we were in the US, she took the SAT test and got better than 96% of seniors who take the test!

[Jeanne @soultravelers3]

Thanks Leticia,

I suppose it depends on the parents, kids and schools and I have heard very good things from traveling parents who have taken their kids out of schools for a year and returned without any problems.

We prefer to homeschool ( only used schools abroad to get fluent in Spanish and Chinese) but mostly homeschooled on the road. So we never plan to be part of the American educational system until Mozart goes to Harvard or somewhere similar on full scholarship.

Mozart's always been way ahead of peers in the American school system. At 13 when we were in the US, she took the SAT test and got better than 96% of seniors who take the test! She took it through Johns Hopkins talent search for gifted and talented and did better than 2/3 of the kids in that program so got some award.

Thus we like the freedom of doing education our own way and only seems to leave her ahead and gives her much more free time to pursue things like her music, service projects or teaching her languages etc.

Good luck!