Would you take your kids out of school to go travelling?

I am so jealous!

Would go in a heartbeat.

As experienced teacher I’d suggest:

Maths:
Get decent workbooks. So much easier than looking around for random bits. For example:

https://whiteroseeducation.com/resources/maths/primary#workbooks

English:
Get your know the expectations for each of your child’s year groups well and task them to write something, perhaps over 2 or three days per week, working towards certain points from the exemplification. And keep reading obviously. And maybe get a coupe of decent comprehension books for them each for other days.
For example:

https://www.nottinghamschools.org.uk/teaching-and-learning-support/primary-teaching-and-learning/moderation-writing-y3-y4-y5/

https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/ks2-assessment-and-targets-english/ks2-assessment-and-targets-english-writing/writing-exemplification-materials-writing-targets-and-assessments-english-targets-and-assessments-assessment-targets-planning-and-assessment-key-stage-2-year-3-4-5-6

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857479636/ref=sspa_mw_detail_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9kZXRhaWw&aref=WzvkorFzcL&sp_cr=ZAZ

Could do this with added tutor too but this would be my basic starting point. I’d say you need to know well what is expected of them by the end if the school year they are missing.

Pleeeeassse go for it!

Honestly, I wouldn't even worry about them having gaps in their education at that age; several years of home schooling one of my DCs who successfully went into school age 13 made me wonder what they did in school all day!

if it's any help, we did the basics of school-type education using maths work books, plus a lot of reading, exploring, research, and discussion. Did a bit of traveling. This was pre-broadband Internet, ha. Home school inspectors were always happy with their progress.

@Travellingtime123

Hello, I'm curious as to whether you decided to travel in the end?

our kids are 5 & 8 and we're considering a similar thing, albeit for a shorter period. Any advice you have would be v helpful!

Teacher here..... Absolutely yes. Do it!

Honestly? Not if you want to get them into a grammar or a selective academic private school. Year 5 is the main prep year for those exams and they happen in the first term of year 6 as pp said. A tutor while away won’t make up for missing school, many kids have school AND a tutor.

If you are relaxed about which secondary they go to - and will be ok with a not particularly academic private or the local state - then go for it.

100% yes

These kids will be much more adaptable and less worried about stuff

Even without the travelling they are moving country anyway so not just stuck in a "safe" routine little bubble and will be needing to leave things like dance classes friends bedroom etc

That's true for the London grammars, dc doing hours of tuition weekly for 2 years. I know lots of people this year who didn't get a grammar place but went to private - a few with bursaries.

For super-selective grammars serving large areas, parents arranging weekly coaching / tutoring (sometimes on top of private schooling in schools that pride themselves on grammar prep) for at least a year before the test is the norm. For ‘take top 25% of the cohort’ in more deprived areas of fully grammar counties, much less focused familiarisation is fine.

I wouldn't say this is accurate any more. I live in a fully grammar county, and everyone has weekly 11+ tutoring for a minimum of a year before, with the pushier parents starting 2 years before.

The OP can put them in private school when she comes back if needed so nothing to worry about imo. Do it!

I wouldn't, no.

My kids love a holiday but its very different travelling for that length of time - its intense not having a "home" for a long period. They will barely remember this as adults other than as a period of disruption, so its mainly you that benefits, potentially at the expense of their education and wellbeing.

My kids love their life at home - they are very attached to simple things like their own beds and bedrooms, our cats. They love their hobbies including music lessons (bulky instruments they couldn't bring), dance, team sports, friends and the community at home.They would not be happy at all to leave it.

Yes I would do it! I’d be careful about the countries I chose to travel in though atm.

Don't waste any opportunity...you only have one shot down here....what's the worst that could happen....you could always come back.

Absolutely!

Keep up with reading, writing and maths and you should be fine. If they are currently being educated somewhere else, there could easily be gaps anyway.

Go for it, it is an opportunity that won't come round twice.

Obviously a great deal has changed since then, but my parents did this with me and my two brothers back in the late 70s. I was 11 at the time.

We travelled for six months, in a camper van, through pretty much all of western europe. Well, Yugoslavia as well.

We stayed in campsites, and our education consisted of worksheets that covered only English and mathematics.

Education-wise, I got back to school at the end of the year just in time for the end of year tests, passed everything with no problems, as did my brothers, and started high school the following year with no academic problems and tons more general knowledge than my classmates.

Experience-wise, do it!
Obviously I was a kid, so won't have remembered everything, but a heck of a lot of the memories are crystal clear.
The memories that stand out the most were actually everyday sorts of things which differed radically from what I had known up till then. So, seeing a maypole for the first time or things like kids standing at the side of the road in Yugoslavia trying to sell just 2 or 3 figs to passing tourists or out working as shepherds. Or old women in Greece leading donkeys utterly laden down with straw or firewood along the road while all the menfolk seemed to be relaxing in the local cafe, etc. :-(

It's not just the initial experience, though, but also the ability to decades later revisit somewhere, whether in person or via the news, and have a memory and some sort of connection with that place.
Maybe this all sounds a little twee or self-centered but, for example, the war in the Balkans at the end of last century felt a lot 'closer to home' knowing that the people killing and being killed there were the ones/just like the ones I had seen their earlier, in the same terrain.
Or when you see pictures of a glacier that you walked on as a kid, with a staircase leading down to the surface of the glacier that you know you walked down. Except that the glacier has now shrunk so much that the staircase ends meters above the ice...
I guess I'm saying that for me, at least, it increased my understanding of the world and where one sits in it ...

Two downsides to note, though:

Spending so much time in such close proximity can bring you together as a family, but can also drive you rather nuts at times. Build in potential escapes from one another, even if its just taking the kids to playgrounds or beaches or whst have you occasionally.

Long term, your kids might end up longing for one of the places you visited and spend their adult life somewhere very very far from you.

Definitely do it. I'm not sure if I would even do formal schooling in your position. If you get familiar with the appropriate curriculum for their age you could work on it in other ways, calculating how to divide bills or budget for a part of the trip, reading books by local authors, learning foreign languages, interpreting a complex bus timetable, writing long letters to granny describing particular places etc. The life experience will be 10x the school learning.

YES YES YES

Yes, absolutely yes.

Havent done it myself, but I know several families who have. It's always been a fantastic addition to their DCs education and attitude.

The worldschooling/full time travel family stuff on Insta etc is just like the rest of the internet - some of it is really helpful and some of it is just total b***ks 😂

Our two had a North Face 28L backpack each and it fitted everything they needed. Clothes, toys, snorkels, drawing books, tablets etc. They carried these most of the time. But we were only in one climate really so packing was much easier. I would say that if you're moving around a lot then the constant repacking is very irritating - so the less you can take the better. Laundry in SE Asia is ridiculously cheap so you can wash everything a couple of times a week if you need to.

Our main challenge was that I didn't factor in enough time based in communities and we did too much in hindsight. Some of the time on the road as a four was awesome but it is everyone together, 24/7. I think we all preferred the places where we had a good chunk of time to settle in a bit. If I was planning it again I would do way more worldschool hubs (like the pop up ones where they are essentially just families coming together for a while).

I wouldn’t do “some homeschooling” during the year. I would research the complete curriculum for each child and make sure we covered everything. Use a packaged curriculum if you don’t feel confident on building a program independently.

The answer is yes. I am confident in my ability to homeschool the early years of education while traveling so I would take the opportunity.

Plenty of people do. I briefly followed a family in instragram and now have lots of suggestions of similar threads .

• picture of beach
• picture if sunset over beach
• picture of kids going to school/being home schooled
• picture of kids in swimming pool
• Picture of wet, rainy England

Often accompanied by ‘look at us /smug/ aren’t we wonderful/living the best life/ found inner peace/family time comments

(Stopped following first family when they posted a thread of husband and wife playing cards. I then questioned why I was watching strangers doing inane tasks)

update -apologies to poster above - the ones I see are all a little smug

We went for a bit of a weird itinerary just because of the places that the kids wanted to go to! We started in Central America and did Mexico (mostly as I wanted to go to Day of the Dead in Oaxaca) and Costa Rica (boys' top pick), then back to the UK for Xmas then out to SE Asia for 7 months. Back to Europe for the Summer as we have a campervan so travelled round in that for a couple of months.

My boys are really into nature so all of our top things were animal based - Komodo National Park, River Kinabatangan in Borneo, all of Costa Rica and learning to dive in Thailand. SE Asia was obviously much easier on the budget than Central America and Europe, hence why most of our time was there. We loved Bali, Komodo, Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam particularly. As I mentioned before, SE Asia also has absolutely LOADS of worldschooling communities and hubs that are brilliant. The Worldschool Pop Up Hubs are really affordable and great for meeting other families. We also joined the Bliss Hub in Koh Lanta which was great. Our boys also spent six weeks in a little international school in Bali that took temporary enrolments.

I've got a blog that goes in to loads of detail of where we went, how much we spent in each country, top stuff we did etc etc if that helps. Our insta handle is the same and happy to answer any questions via DM etc (I genuinely don't think I like anything more than thinking about our trip, so always happy to talk about it!!).

I would, if I could afford it. It would be some much more valuable for your kids! I actually know someone who done this, she was taken to court by the school but argued successfully that her kid benefitted from it immensely.