Planning on taking DCs out of school in a few years' time to travel. Best ways to 'home ed'?

[Flubba]

We're planning on travelling round the world in five years' time when DD1 will be 10, DD2 will be nearly 9 and DS will be nearly 7 (sounds mad when DS is currently crawling around eating socks! :o). We're planning on going for an academic year.

We will be travelling by public transport and therefore a large number of books is going to be difficult to accommodate, although from what I've read a lot of you Home Edders say to ditch curriculum books anyway? Does that still stand into late primary years?

DH and I are both teachers (secondary) and are confident about the majority of 'subjects' the children would normally cover during the year, and although they will be gaining a wealth of knowledge by experiencing everything we hope to see and do, they will (likely!) be returning to school when we return, and we obviously don't want them to feel like they've fallen behind while we're travelling.

So, what do you think is the best approach to take?

I certainly wouldn't bother dragging curriculum books around with you. I'd think you can pick up things on your travels, or use the internet, when you need to look something up.

If it was me, I'd think more in terms of what skills your DC need, rather than worry about specific subjects - literacy, numeracy, creativity, "how things work" and "what the world is like" - they are still so far away from exams at that age that there isn't a list of topics and facts that they will miss out on if you do things totally differently from a school approach.

About the only thing I might be tempted to do according to school expectations would maybe be maths, because quite a lot of that builds on previous methods and skills so they might be "behind" on their return. There are maths websites which cover national curriculum levels, so you would be able to cover topics using those, to make sure they know about long division or whatever. But at the same time, dealng with local money, exchange rates, distances, time zones, etc will give them a practical exposure to what maths is for anyway.

Everything else, I'd be tempted to cover by going with the flow in whatever situations you find yourselves in - they could make up "projects" about where you are, aspects of the local history, geography, culture, religion, etc. Differences in agriculture, technology, transport. Sports and leisure activities. You name it, there will be opportunities for them to "research" local issues and "present" them in different formats - so long as they are finding out about anything, and writing and drawing about it, they'll be improving the same skills that school is meant to encourage.

Thanks AMumInScotland that's pretty much what I was hoping to hear. I like the idea of projects - and that'll tap in nicely to whatever it is that sparks their interest in particular about where we are/what we see/do.

I thought about the maths one in particular too - it does seem to be something that will be easy to do but important to not let slip, and as you say, we should be able to include a lot of maths from whatever it is we do and see.

Just to say I am completely !!! I would love to take a year out for travel with my girls. Just need to persuade my cautious, conventional lovely DH (persuading him to let us give HE a go took long enough ).

Can I ask where you plan to travel to? Are you worried about health/safety aspects? I'd love to know more bout your plans!

:) catnip it's taken a lot of persuading of my cautious, conventional lovely DH for him to agree to it too! I've worked on him over the past few years, drip feeding about wonderful places I've been to and would like to visit again, or places I've never seen and want to see. DH would be quite happy with a wee jaunt around the UK and possibly over to the continent :o

We have a few vague plans at this stage ~ SE Asia, India, South & Central America, Africa, Oz & NZ (if we can afford them) and possibly E Europe (if we can afford it). We have a big wall atlas map and a guidebook which we'll gradually add pins/stars to when we read about a place and want to visit it, (so hoping that when the kids - who are only 4, 3 and 9m - come across things like The Pyramids etc) then it'll ignite their interest even more. And when it comes to the time, we'll decide on where exactly to go based on how many people in the family want to go there and if we can afford it.

We've started saving monthly and will add more to our travel fund as and when we can. If big things come up which take money away from our fund, we'll adjust our plans accordingly :(. We'll do most of our travelling by land (to reduce costs and to increase the 'experience').

In terms of health and safety, we'll obviously follow any embassy advice if there are places to avoid. Depending on where we decide to actually visit, we'll immunise if it's not detrimental to the DCs. So far our kids seem quite sensible (with a wee streak of naughtiness here and there! :o) so I think it'll be tough but doable. tbh I'm reading up on it wherever I can and stealing ideas from other families who've done it.

Getting excited about it already, even though it's a long way off!

Sounds fab :)

So what if they get a bit behind, they will have the experience of a lifetime and catch up when they get back.

I'd think about setting up links with the schools (and pupils) they are leaving behind so they can send a weekly e-mail saying where they have been and what they are doing, any new words they have learned etc etc.

I agree on the maths though

Just posting to say how jealous I am. I would love to do this. Actually, I HS'd my DS using the K12 system and we loved it, but it is American so probably not suitable for your family. Good luck!

We did this 5 years ago with ds1 aged 7 and ds2 aged 5. We picked up books in book exchanges as we went round, in Canada and Oz we went to lots of libraries and sat and read there.
We did very little formal stuff. They learnt so much though. They were already good at maths and so that was not a problem, we just did bits for fun but they were younger. We spent 11 weeks in Spanish speaking countries so they learnt some of another language. They most important thing they learnt was that just because we do/something one way in the UK doesn't mean it is the right or only way.We wrote postcards to family and kept a journal when we could be bothered
They had no problems returning to school, I did ask to be told about an gaps in knowledge (I am a primary teacher) but they were fine.
We took their gameboys with us and our youngest picked up loads of words on that (I remember being asked what quenched meant while he was on Pokemon). Look into taking something educational on a Nintendo DS if such a thing exists. Have fun with a pack if cards, great for maths games.

Have fun.

Thanks Horopu - great to hear from real people who've done it too :)

Just to warn you - my DH spent the entire time casing out the world to find a new country to live in - we went back to the UK for three years and are now in NZ just finishing our second happy year.

A friend of mine did this and her children's primary school (to which her DD was going to return) insisted that her DD wrote a long email to the class once a week describing what she had been doing. Great for writing skills!

Shhh Horopu don't tell my DH that, because it'll be me casing out the world to find a new country to live in and if he knew it might spark my interest again, he might be more reluctant to do it

That's a great way for the kids in the primary school as well as the travelling kid to keep in touch and not forget about each other bonsoir! (Even if I am a bit at the insisting bit! :o

We home ed, I have heard of people doing mission trips where they have to plan well ahead and our neighbours sailed for 6 months with their kids..

I reckon making use of an e-reader or two will help a lot. You can cram it full of books and pdfs. Also a tablet/ipad would be useful. For Maths you could use something like Math Mammoth, which is a pdf, on a tablet so you don't have to cart around books. It can be completed on the tablet with a stylus. With a tablet you would also have the benefit of web access to research whatever you need. If you wanted science curriculum to follow you could download 'Building Foundations in Scientific Understanding' as a pdf, It requires very little stuff other than basic bits and bobs, its not work sheets or anything, more info for parents on experiments and a logical progression in concepts/talking points. If your kids need reading instruction try 'Ordinary parents guide to Teaching Reading' or '100 EZ lessons'. You may also enjoy 'Story of the world', its a 4 volume world History for under 10s. Also available as a pdf.There are tons of downloadable home ed curricula & resources.

Its not that you necessarily need curriculum but can help when you are busy. Particularly if you kids are re entering school.

You could use purposeful conversation to cover lots of things and draw on your day to day experiences.

I have to say, the evolution of technology will undoubtedly make our lives easier and our bags lighter. May well have to add the purchase of tablets to our travel costs! I imagine the same could go for kindles, although I'm loathe to read from a screen instead of a book MN aside of course :)