kids

Considering homeschooling your kids?

It’s a hot mess! Don’t do it! Just kidding, read on!

Some time ago, my family and I decided to go on a small adventure. Our kids’ education has always been very important to us so we had to think long and hard about how traveling would affect their schooling. What should a traveling, world-schooling, location-independent family do? How to make sure our Kindergartner, 2nd Grader and 6th Grader don’t fall behind?

In all honesty, I was worried about how this would play out. On the outside I said, “2nd grade math, I got this!” But internally I definitely had my concerns.

Here’s the good news: there’s lots of information online to guide you. The bad news: there’s LOTS OF INFORMATION online to guide you. Quite frankly, it was a bit overwhelming when we first looked into it. After hours of research sometimes I would feel even more confused than when I started.

So without further ado, here’s our list of the top 5 things to consider before homeschooling your kids:

1. Your personal level of involvement.

Are you considering being the primary teaching source? If so, will you require lesson plans and teacher guides? Or do you plan on outsourcing most of the “teaching” via online courses and/or even online tutors and virtual classrooms? The gift and the curse of homeschooling is, well, you’re in charge. Which is very empowering but at the same time the added responsibility can be daunting.

We have about an 80/20 split with us doing most of the presswork and teaching. But we do use Khan Academy and other self-guided tools to help with the process.

2. How formal will your “teaching” be?

Do you intend to essentially duplicate a traditional class and grade curriculum? Or will you fully go the “unschooling” route? There’s a sense of structure following the traditional method. Many online curriculums basically follow whatever the government’s requirements are. Unschooling completely is very liberating and allows kids to develop a sense of control for their own education. It allows the child to learn at their own pace, many times this leads to a child who’s more interested in the material. (By the way, make sure you check with your State’s/Country’s legal requirements for withdrawing your child(ren) out of a formal school. In our State of California, the requirements are not very stringent and there’s plenty of advice on how to make sure you’re doing it right.)

Our family is at about a 50/50 split. We’re aware of the curriculum requirements as defined by the California Board of Education and make sure they are at least up to par on the core competencies for their grades. However, instead of learning about the Boston Tea Party, our oldest chose to learn about the history of the Mayan civilization. Further, he learned not through a text book but by visiting actual Mayan ruins. No big deal!

3. Your financial commitment.

As mentioned earlier, there are A LOT of options and styles for homeschooling out there. Are you looking to invest a few thousand dollars in your child’s homeschool curriculum? You can find that. Are you more comfortable starting out with a bunch of free printables? You can find that as well. The reality is there is a financial component to homeschooling your kid(s), even if it’s just to print material out. Understanding your finances and approach will help you avoid wasting time/money on resources that are just not what you’re looking for.

We have spent about $800 on basic school textbooks/supplies and online services. We have spent a significant amount more on Tours/Travel/Museums/Diving and “world schooling.”

4. Your level of patience.

These kids will DRIVE YOU UP THE WALL. I have a new found appreciation for the patience teachers exhibit, God bless them. Even with the best laid out plans, kids have a way of turning everything upside down, of being dismissive or just not focusing. All things that can really irate us as parents in general but become even more magnified when you’re trying to teach them how to add double digits. (REGROUP THE TENS, SOFIA! REGROUP THE TENS!!!…oh, sorry about that.)

I thought I was a patient person prior to homeschooling. But now, let’s just say I’ve taken up meditation. I say this with more truth than as joke. Your patience will be tested and it’s a good idea to start thinking about that now. How do you handle it? Can you start working on increasing it now?

5. Internet Access.

This is a subtle but important consideration. I wrote here on some of the major decisions we reversed while traveling. While traveling the world is incredible, we’ve visited many places where the internet connection is poor at best and nonexistent at worst, in spite of “wifi” being part of the reason we stayed at a particular location. You have to consider how reliant you will be on being connected in order to teach your child.

Our original plan was to be as close to 100% paperless as possible. That changed and now we carry textbooks.

You may have noticed these five considerations don’t function in a vacuum. If you’ve settled one item, it doesn’t mean you’ll never have to address it again. On the contrary, all five things work in a sort of dynamic harmony. The more you give in one regard may require you to take from another. Low patience may mean you need to spend more money on virtual tutors. Going 100% traditional curriculum may save you lots of time in figuring things out. You may be able to solve the internet problem by paying for satellite internet access but your financial investment will be higher.

The sweet spot is where you will be most comfortable from a teacher perspective, financial commitment, time devotion and internet connectivity.

The Bottom Line

Do not let not having it all worked out stop you from doing it. Invest as much time as you’d like and then push forward. Hopefully this post helps with, at the very least, settling some of the anxiousness when starting your research. What you will learn by actually doing it, not to mention the direct feedback from your kids, will be as valuable if not more than all the research and preparation in the world.

Keep it as simple as possible and then build up! Get a generic “Nth grade curriculum” list from online and get the minimal amount of materials. And then build up from there.

Lastly, know that many parents have done this before with great success. You can too and we’re here to help!

In part one, I wrote about some serious about-faces we’ve had during our travel. In summary, we went from:

Before we started we imagined ourselves some kind of quasi-backpacking family – agile and light! Yeah right.

What happened?

As great as the idea to travel “light” was, it really didn’t jive well with our reality. Traveling with young kids made it difficult to just suck it up and deal with some of the inconveniences of not carrying much. For example, simple concerns like, worrying if our kids would be cold, meant traveling with additional sweaters and coats. We started off with just a couple of stuffed animals as toys and now we have a collection of 40+ Hotwheels:

I know, it’s ridiculous. However, it does bring some sense of consistency to our kids, especially our youngest, so we decided it’s worth it.

We started off with one pair of shoes for everyone and now we have those pairs… plus sandals, water shoes, rain boots and some sexy AF heals I bought my wife for a party we attended in Guatemala. Stilettos are not easy to pack, let me tell you.

In essence we decided the convenience of packing light was not worth the inconveniences of not having what we needed, especially with our kids. Or conversely, the inconvenience of traveling with so much stuff does not outweigh the benefit of having some important but not essential items with us.

If you’re planning a similar trip, I would advise you to think long and hard about this decision. We chose wrong to begin our trip and unfortunately it cost us time and money as we ended up re-purchasing some items we gave away before leaving. I believe either way works, you should just be clear on the sacrifices and benefits of each.

Homeschooling

The other decision we completely reversed was how we were going to homeschool. As I mention in part 1, our initial plan was to be as paper/book-less as possible and do everything online. Nope. We quickly realized Wi-Fi can be painfully slow at best and completely unreliable at worst, even when we only stay at places were Wi-Fi is “available.” When schooling was dependent on internet access, this became a serious problem. The solution? Good ol’ trusty paper and textbooks. Pain in the ass to lug around but an incredibly effective way to guarantee school continues. If you’re thinking about homeschooling as well. Keep this in mind. Being fully online is great… if you can get online.

School To-Go

Location Duration

Lastly, we have completely changed how and for how long we travel. Initially we set out to visit a location for a week or so, maybe 10 days. The idea was to cram it all in, not unlike we used to plan our vacations. Now, we’ve just begun a 6-week stay in Costa Rica. Big difference. But why? In no particular order – cost, convenience and effort.

Cost: although we are enjoying an indefinite travel adventure, we are still on a budget. We factor in the cost of housing into our decision as it obviously plays a major role in how we spend our money. One thing we discovered was the many AirBnBs offer substantial weekly and monthly discounts. For example, the beautiful colonial home we stayed in Nicaragua had a price of $80 per night. However, if you booked a week there was a 25% discount and if you booked a month, the discount was a whopping 65% off. Essentially, booking a month cost us the same as if we only stayed two weeks. We stayed at a beautiful home for a month at the equivalent of about 10 days at regular price. Bam!

This type of deal isn’t unique either. We’ve learned the longer we stay at a place the more cost effective, and not by just a little. The longer stays have allowed us to take “mini-trips” within the greater stop, as we did in Nicaragua. Yes, we do end up paying for a home we are not sleeping in but the net effect on our budget is the same – with the added benefit of being able to see a different part of the area.

Additionally, we don’t have to drag the 2-tons worth of luggage during these mini-trips. We’ve reduced the amount of travel days, AKA “how-long-will-it-take-for-dad-to-blow-a-gasket” days. Win/Win for everyone.

Again, I highly encourage you to think about what you’d like to get out of your prolonged travel. Extended stays are both cost-effective and stabilizing while at the same time may “limit” the amount of places you see. We feel the benefits easily outweigh the cost but you’ll have to decide for your self.

All in all, this trip has been an incredible learning experience. We’ve made our mistakes and hopefully we’re learning and growing from them. There are plenty more but the above three have really been eye-opening for us.