Homeschooling on the Go

By Mimi Rothschild

Do you think you’re moving too fast to homeschool? Think again! Homeschooling presents wonderful opportunities to learn from life. This means your homeschool children can expand their knowledge bases, without regard to the planned events for the day.

Without question, homeschooling is uniquely intertwined with everyday life. As such, things come up that may make settling down with textbooks difficult to do. For example, in the middle of your homeschool day bad weather may hit, causing a power outage. Though such an event is unpleasant, it also provides an excellent opportunity to teach your homeschool students how to react in such emergencies and even about electricity. Furthermore, you can add some talk about weather and nature for a well-rounded lesson.

Moving cross-country? Use that as an opportunity to teach your homeschool students about everything from geography and climate to calculating car mileage and gas costs. Cover math, science, and geography as you plan your move. Don’t forget about history! Use your move to help your children learn a little about the history of your new home and even the places you pass on your way there.

Too many people think of homeschooling as only sitting down with books, paper, and pencils. Ask any homeschool parent, however, and he or she will probably agree that homeschool students learn amazing things from real life. Often, it seems they learn more from life than books.

Often times real life situations will stimulate the homeschool student to learn. For example, a homeschool student may spot a snake outside. That may stimulate him or her to pick up a book about snakes and really absorb the information. By the same token, a strange cloud formation could lead to a study of clouds and even the weather. Keep in mind that many children are far more likely to put effort into learning something when they have genuine interest in the subject.

Some homeschool parents choose to homeschool on the move. Many take books and other resources along as they run errands, visit relatives, or drive to activities. This allows the homeschool family to accomplish important tasks, while making sure schoolwork is done at the same time.

The ability to homeschool on the move is one of the beauties of homeschooling. You can make your homeschool program whatever you want it to be, homeschooling wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself. Best of all, you can create a homeschool program that fits your family perfectly.