Take homeschooling on the road while traveling with these simple roadschooling tips for newbies!
Transitioning to RV Life
Life is a crazy rollercoaster filled with unexpected hills, twists, and turns.
Full-time RV living with our kids was one of those unexpected twists.
In 2020, we sold our home of over 10 years and moved cross-country to pursue a dream.
Then, the housing market when crazy, we lost our temporary rental house, and found ourselves moving into our tiny camper.
It didn’t take us long to realize the housing market was not getting better, it was only getting worse.
This opened up a whole new opportunity for our family and we dived in head first.
It was tense, exciting, difficult, fun, and everything in between.
With that said, we have now been living full-time in our RV for almost 2 full years and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Living the Travel life
While finding roots is always floating around somewhere in the back of our minds, our family is currently in a season of nomadic living.
For the past 2 years, we have traveled off and on and have 3 home base areas (Montana, Kansas, and Texas) we frequent while hitting lots of new places in between!
During our first year, we split the majority of our time between Kansas & Montana.
Kansas for visiting family and Montana because it is our happy place — plus, my daughter was still receiving orthodontia care in Montana so we needed to be close by for those appointments.
Then, in our second year, we spent our time traveling a bit more.
After spending our entire summer in Montana, we headed East to hit lots of awesome historical sites before heading to the Midwest to see family and friends before the holiday season.
After that, we headed down to Texas to spend the winter with my brother.
Finally, we are back in Montana to finish out our second year.
We are full-time RVers & part-time travelers that are just going with the flow.
Roadschooling for Newbies
While roadschooling was never something I thought our family would do, it is now officially the norm for us.
With that said, there are both pros and cons to this amazing ride.
These are just a few of the things I’ve loved & disliked about road schooling and traveling with my kiddos over the past 2 years.
- I’ve been able to make incredible memories with my kiddos
- History lessons have been brought to life by visiting historical sites
- We have had the experience of a lifetime
- Staying caught up on bookwork is HARD
- Traveling all the time is expensive
- RV life can be just as stressful as living in a home, it’s just a different kind of stress
While there are both ups and downs, overall, homeschooling on the road has been such an incredible blessing.
Rules for Homeschooling on the Road
One of the biggest frustrations or concerns I hear from newbies that want to homeschool on the road, is how does one make this work when every state has different homeschool laws?
Thankfully, the answer is fairly simple.
Many roadschooling families have the luxury of choosing their home state.
Take our family for example.
While we spend the majority of our time in Montana, our homeschool state of choice is actually Kansas.
We do this for multiple reasons.
Our family has homeschooled in the state of Kansas for most of our homeschool years (since it is where we are originally from), we know the laws well, we are in that area multiple times a year, and I have chosen to keep it as my home state of residence.
If you are concerned about homeschooling on the road these resources will help!
First, check with the HSLDA to get familiar with all the state homeschool laws.
Then, if you still have questions — The Crazy Outdoor Mama has created this great resource for homeschooling on the road with a breakdown of everything you need to know!
Roadschooling with Curriculum
Homeschooling while traveling and using a traditional sit-down curriculum can be challenging, to say the least.
We still very much use a traditional homeschool curriculum in our tiny home on wheels, we just use a slightly different approach now that we travel part-time.
Bookwork tends to happen sporadically while are traveling and is much more structured when we are stationary.
For example, we traveled over the fall and winter months during our second year of RV life, and for a good portion of that time we focused on experiences, rather than sit-down learning.
Structured learning didn’t truly begin until we recently reached our summer destination for a 6-month stay.
Some may find our homeschool style ironic because summertime is actually our most structured time for learning!
These are a few of the key things I have learned from traveling while homeschooling.
- Purchasing PDF versions and printing curriculum as needed helps save space (we typically print out 12 weeks at a time since we utilize a folder system for our homeschool).
- Sneaking bookwork in here and there while traveling can be difficult, planning times to be stationary so you can focus on core subjects is essential when using a traditional curriculum.
- Children don’t have to learn all the things. Skipping some parts of your curriculum or throwing one out altogether is OK. Kids will have plenty of chances to learn things in this life and bookwork is not the end all be all.
With all that said, we will likely always use some type of curriculum in our homeschool — leaning on summer as our main learning time.
Roadschooling without Curriculum
If you choose to homeschool on the road without the use of curriculum, what an adventure your kiddos have in store!
While we personally do a mixture of both, these are some of the fun experiences we have had with no curriculum road schooling.
Man, oh man have we been to some awesome places!
Last fall we took 3 weeks to travel parts of the East before landing in the Midwest with family.
We visited many historical sites in Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Washington D.C.
My kids were able to learn living history by walking the path Flight 93 took on that dreadful September day and by walking the halls in the very building where our Declaration of Independence was signed.
Learning history by standing where it happened is incredible, you guys!
With that said, only utilizing field trips as your homeschool curriculum can have its ups and downs.
These are a few of the things you can expect when traveling for your homeschool.
- History will not only be exciting, but it will also come to life when you walk the very halls a historical person once walked. Children will simply retain more information because they have a memory associated with this lesson.
- Learning happens everywhere! No matter where you walk, something historical happened there. Plus, life is full of math lessons (how many slices in your pizza?), spelling (road signs, names at museums, etc), and other core subjects. You just have to use every opportunity as a less.
- Traveling full-time to teach your kids about life by living life, can be exhausting — especially for introvert parents. It can also get costly.
Whether you choose to road school with just curriculum, by unschooling & teaching through life, or a mixture of both (like we do) simply remember to be flexible, stress less, and focus on the memories cause this life goes by crazy fast, you guys!
Other Homeschool Tips
Prior to homeschooling on the road, we were homeschooling at the kitchen table in our sticks-and-bricks home.
From virtual learning to homeschooling with a full homeschool curriculum, our family has been through it all.
With that said, if homeschooling while traveling is your reality (or even if it’s not) you can find all of our homeschool helps over on our Life + Homeschool blog.
I’ve been homeschooling my kiddos for over 8 years and I absolutely love to share about the things I’ve picked up along the way!
Enjoy the journey, you guys!
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