Three and a half months in Europe, how did we go with schooling?
We have been back just over a week from such a wonderful three and a half months roadtripping Europe. As you can imagine there are many wonderful stories we have to share. One of the most popular questions we get asked is with regard to schooling of our now Miss 10 who is in Grade 4.
Everyone does it differently, no one way, is the right way.
For those who may be new to Cake and Eat it 3, we were in campervan which we bought in UK specifically for our travels however long that takes us. We backpack, we
motorhome and in this case we were in a campervan. There is many different styles of traveling and many ways of incorporating education for your kids while doing so.
We had expectations of what we wanted to cover and planned accordingly. Yes, we are planners, always have been always will be. There was lots of downloading of reference books, many educational sites from our Educational Websites and Resources page were used, youtube videos and worksheets saved on places we knew we would visit.
Walk in the park?
Every day while full-time traveling involved walking, but of course not every day was a walk in the park! We generally tried to get the majority of schooling out of the way early in the day. You need to be flexible in your approach and understand some days are going to be better than others. This is life whether on the road or not.
We found hitting reset if frustration or tears, in some cases was fantastic. For example, going for a walk, swim, lunch pretty much anything that did not involve a workbook or times tables! When returning to the task a renewed enthusiasm and clear mind often had it finished in record time. And she assures us she still loves us!
Games
There is a great card game for those of you with kids trying to do times tables (I still remember how tortured I felt learning them, then teaching the eldest daughter, now again with the youngest- I must enjoy stress!)
Grab a deck of cards, place Ace (being zero) to Queen (being 12) in one pile mixed up. Then the deck of cards remaining in the other. Flip one from your first pile and one from your second pile, first to answer the times table keeps the card taken from the second pile.
First to ten cards wins. So if a 5 was flipped over off pile 1 and 6 was flipped over from pile 2 first to answer 5 x 6, 30 wins the number 6 card. Great way to teach times tables and have a bit of fun!
What did we take?
We had a sa
msung tablet which had all readers and reference books downloaded on it. Our mistake here was only buying a 16GB we will definitely look at getting a bigger one to allow for more educational apps.
We also had memory cards, our laptops and external hard drives so it wasn’t an issue but if I was recommending to anyone else backpacking the bigger the better on a tablet.
Maths and Grammar workbooks for Miss B for her grade level.
A4 Whiteboard was invaluable. Saves space, great for going over workings, spelling tests without paper and fun games on the road too.
Weekly Homeschool Diary from The Educating Parent that we use for the whole school year anyway. This allows us to see what we have covered at a glance and where we may need to revisit.
Reading, Writing
We kept the Year 4 curriculum in mind. In Australia it is easily accessible and the link can be found for all other Aussies on our Educational Websites and Resources page. We had reading books related to her year level and comprehension worksheets downloaded before we left. This made it very easy to retrieve on the road all stored in folders in advance.
Miss B also documented some of her experiences by writing in a journal, writing stories and even wrote 
her first blog piece while in France. We were fortunate to be given a travel journal to review from Christina Speer prior to taking off on our journey. Miss B really enjoyed the easy entry format. I Loved…. I did not like…. I learned today… which encouraged her to write more about her experiences.
The tickets from entry into all the amazing places we visited, drawings and polaroid photos from a friend she met along the way all ended up in her journal. What a great momento for years to come. You can grab one here which benefits us in a minor way, but no extra to you and supports this wonderful project of Christina’s.
Report Card Roadschooling
Home schooling report card for those of you planning a trip whether fulltime or short term holiday and want to incorporate educational components. This is what worked for us.
Heading back
The intention is, to go back to Europe in May 2018 and 2019. We wanted good systems in place. Ones that we can use while travelling full-time both in our home country of Australia and overseas.
We hope this helps others wanting to worldschool and passionately believe we learn from the world around us and those we meet.
Enjoy your travels…
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