Roadschooling: Our current plans

A couple of people have asked us about our plans for homeschooling (or roadschooling) Sam while we're on the road. Although we recognize that our approach will evolve, our current strategy is to use a combination of child-led discovery and a more traditional approach.

Looking cool in Trent's old army jacket

Sam loves to read and enjoys history, so we selected the highly-rated Story of the World series to cover the social studies bases this year. He's already about 1/3 of the way through the first book and has trouble putting it down to go to bed.

For math, we picked the Life of Fred series. Trent's sister has homeschooled her kids for years; her whole family loves Life of Fred. It's not a typical math workbook. It consists of funny stories in which Fred has to use math to solve various challenges and problems. I think this may be a bit of an adjustment for him; he's used to more traditional math workbooks. But we'll give it a try and see how it goes.

Writing is a crucial skill, and I think the best way to learn how to write well is to just... do it. A lot. So he'll be journaling throughout our time on the road. He'll also be sending letters and postcards to his relatives. At times, I may help him edit his work and write a second draft, but mostly I just want him to have fun with it. I want him to see writing as a way to express his feelings, work through his experiences, and develop his ideas. We'll also be working on some basic grammar skills using a Scholastic Success grammar workbook.

Learning from Biscuit, our feline sage

We won't have a structured science curriculum. Trent and I are both scientists, and we both believe that scientific inquiry is something that all of us do naturally if given the opportunity and headspace. In our opinion, children are the best scientists in the world. They're keen observers. They ask tons of questions without fear of "sounding stupid," formulate creative and unbiased hypotheses, and treat the testing of those hypotheses as a form of play. At this point, we'd like the scientific learning to just unfold in a natural way. (He's also totally addicted to science programs like Cosmos, so when we can, we'll give him the opportunity to zone out with those shows.)

He's also a bit addicted to the iPad. Oh well.

Other than that, we're going to let Sam's interests and our journey guide his learning. If we're in Texas, for example, we'll learn a little about Texas history, climate, major cities, and social issues. If we're in the mountains, we'll talk about how mountains form, high elevation ecosystems, etc. We'll take advantage of local museums, parks, and concerts.

We also want to give Sam a chance to just be a kid - to ride around campgrounds on his bike, hang out with other kids, explore. Playing is such a crucial part of learning. Simply having this adventure with us will be a tremendous learning experience for him.

Those are the pie-in-the-sky plans. We'll see how it actually pans out. I think we're flexible enough to tailor our approach to Sam's specific learning style.