Where and When to home school on the road

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” - Mark Twain

When to do it

One of the hardest things to come to grips with was when to do homework. Initially I had planned to do an hour, morning and evening, everyday but this just didn’t work out.
Mornings were a rush to explore or to get packed and loaded and underway, the evenings usually found the children shattered.

After a few weeks we settled into a routine of focusing just on the journal on a day to day basis. Maths and German kept us busy on car journeys and the other stuff is what we unpacked if we were ever in one place longer than two days, which I would say approximately 50% of the time we were.

When we were settled the best time to do the home work was in the morning after breakfast and for no longer than a couple of hours. It was intriguing to see the children take nano seconds to answer a question in the morning and as long as a minute to answer the same sort in the evening. With that in mind we tried to the less taxing work in the vening like sewing or drawing or colouring in and spend no longer than about 45 minutes unless they were actively enjoying themselves.

It is also important to remember to de-school. You don't HAVE to teach like a teacher with blackboards, routines and rules and roars.

Where to do it

The best place to do it was either in our hotel room, campervan or somewhere quiet where the children were not distracted. We sometimes did homework in WIfi cafe's becaause of the internet connection. This wasn't the easiest of places although it gave me a lot of people to pick on for advice. In fact in a Wifi cafe in Malaysia I was stuck with a math problem so asked an obviously English man and his wife if they could help me.

Turned out he was a university professor of mathematics. (By the time he'd finished explaining square roots to me I was so confused it took me a week to recover.)

Another excellent spot to do homework was in the libraries.