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

[Travellingtime123]

We’re in a very fortunate position to have the opportunity to take our kids travelling for a year if we want to. We just need to decide if it’s a good idea.

• We’ve lived abroad for a decade and we’re planning to come back to the UK. We’ll be changing jobs/schools anyway so could take a gap year before we come back.
• The kids will be 9 and 7 (we’d come back to the UK in time for them to start year 6 and 4).
• We own a home in the UK so we know where we’re moving back to. Although I have no idea how this would affect school applications etc.
• Both kids like travelling (we’ve done a lot since they were babies), we’ve done full summers but at a pretty slow pace and obviously only for 7 weeks during summer holidays.
• Both kids are doing well academically at school, we’d do some home schooling whilst we travel but it obviously isn’t the same as being in school.
• Both kids are very sociable and make friends easily. They also get on well with each other (usually!)
• Financially we could do it pretty comfortably without having to make too many other compromises (I realize how fortunate this is).
• Family would fly out and meet us at various points for a couple of weeks at a time.

In our position would you do it?
If so, where would you go? I’d love to hear tips from anyone who has done it or anyone who homeschools kids this age.

I, personally, wouldn’t, but you’ve obviously given it a lot of thought, so go for it!

Why did you not travel before you had children ?

Who said the OP hadn't.?

Could ask why would your children shouldn't have the opportunity if you have the ability and means to enable it

We did a bit, but I didn’t meet DH until our early 30s. Then a mixture of work/study commitments and lack of money meant we haven’t travelled together as much as we’d like.

Also, I really want to travel with the kids. I enjoy experiencing new things with them
and they absolutely love it (most of the time).
I’d like to spend a year exploring as a family before they get into secondary education and our opportunities to do it are limited (and they want to spend more time with friends rather than going on holidays with their parents/sibling).
DH and I will travel together as a couple once we retire and they’ve left home but we’d like to spend this time with them whilst they’re young.

That’s a really good point. Thank you!

Honestly, I think you’d be mad NOT to go! It will be an amazing experience for your family and something they will remember forever.

(Although quite what they remember will probably not be what you hope - “remember the electronic toilet in Japan? Remember when that baby threw up on the bus driver?” etc etc)

When we left Asia for Australasia, we travelled for 8 months through Europe with the boys, then aged 12 and 10. I had them research Europe for places they wanted to visit. One chose military history sites, the other mostly theme parks! We spent the majority of time camping or AirbnB in major cities. It was great, we tended to do 1 activity day ( rafting, cycling, high wires hiking etc) followed by 1 cultural day ( museums, galleries, historic places) They kept a diary, improved their language skills and we discussed the pertinent points of each place before visiting for context. We all enjoyed the experience. They were not behind academically and still show a greater interest/understanding of world affairs when compared to most of their peers. I would recommend it. Life is short, they grow up so quick.

We took a family gap year last year with our boys (they missed Year 3 and 5 of school) and if you've got the chance to do it I would absolutely go for it. Best thing we've ever done! They both learnt so much in-person, from rainforest ecosystems to Mayan history, marine biology, different forms of religion/beliefs etc etc. We covered Maths and English with them on the way round (we bought the White Rose Maths workbooks that come with online lessons and had a planner for English from school). They read SO MUCH on our travels and had the chance to spend time on other things they hadn't done much of in school (a lot of time sketching, cartooning, coding online and learning Spanish).

They've been back in school for a few months now and are flying - my eldest just got full marks on all of his SAT practice tests. My one bit of advice would be plan a slow route (slower than you might think!) and join some world-schooling groups on FB. There are loads of hubs around the world and we joined a couple or free ones on our way round and they were great places to meet other families and let the boys hang out with other kids their age for a few weeks.

That’s amazing. Ours will be a similar age so it’s good to hear from someone who has done it.
Would you mind sharing your itinerary?
Do you have any tips? Any locations or activities that were particularly successful (or unsuccessful!)

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.

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!!).

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

Thank you so much, the world schools look really tempting (my kids are both really social, they get on well but they’ll want the opportunity to meet other people too).

I’ve been browsing your blog, it’s really fantastic and given me loads of good ideas. The budgeting advice is really helpful too. Is there anything you found challenging during your travels?
How did you manage packing etc? (We do quite a lot of hiking so my children are happy walking and carrying their own bags but not enough for a full year in different climates and doing different activities).

It’s really lovely to hear from someone who’s actually done it and had a good experience (some of the Instagram accounts are a bit too inspirational to be realistic for a fairly normal family- I saw a post the other day of a lovely hotel in Thailand, it turns out it was over $2000 per night 😂)

I promise I won’t post about it on social media 😂

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.

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).

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.

YES YES YES

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.