Homeschool Road Trip Tips Learned from Traveling West
Traveling with Outside the Box kids can be a challenge. There will be lots of unfamiliar when you travel, and that can be especially hard for some kids who crave the sameness and routine of home.
Homeschool Road Trip Tips
We are generally a routine driven family, but we also love exploring new places and traveling to see new things. A while back we took a bunch of “practice” weekend trips to get everybody ready for an epic homeschool road trip where we spent 15 days traveling from Illinois to Arizona, Utah and back home, visiting 6 national parks along the way. We took our hotel with us, living in a pop-up camper as we explored.
I always like the idea of a camper and being able to have the consistency of home while you were away from home and that was exactly what we had. Each night, no matter where we were, we slept in the same bed and had the same breakfast available. It provided some great structure and comfort for everyone. There is even be a special stash of Legos in our Hotel on Wheels!
During our practice trips we learned many helpful tips that made our big trip a success and there was plenty we figured out along the way, as well. We kept our homeschool going during our road trip, which was much easier than I expected. It didn’t look like it does at home, but we kept up with the basics and had enough experiential learning for a year!
Take a look at these homeschool road trip tips for learning in the car.
Roadschooling Binders
Since we would be spending over forty hours on the road and two weeks of our school year we took some basic school work along with us. It gave the kids’ minds something to do in the car and broke up the endless hours of requests for screens. It never took more than an hour each day. Nearly half our days were driving days so we did our school in the car and when were on location we let the exploring do the teaching.
Each child had a binder for their school work. In the front of it was a child friendly schedule for our trip, which let them know what was happening when and what to expect. Details like how long the drive would be on given days and what our planned activities were at a given location helped everyone be on the same page. There was also a US map to check off the license plates we saw while we were in the car. The first leg of the trip we drove on Route 66, so we saw cars from EVERYWHERE.
Behind their schedule was a section with some math practice pages, fact memory work and story problems. I didn’t give them their regular math books. There was also a section for checking off a daily reading assignment: each kid had one novel to read during the trip. There was also a final section with journal pages for writing daily entries about the trip, which let them record it in their own words and highlights.
Junior Ranger Badges Help Us Prepare
The second half of the binder was filled with the Junior Ranger books for the National parks we planned to visit. Most parks have them available on their websites to download and print out. They make great pre-trip activities and are a fun, free souvenir! In the weeks leading up to the trip the kids began working through some of the activities in their Junior Ranger books, because there are some matching and word searches that don’t require being in the park. It also gave the kids a preview of what they might see and do in the park.
3-2-1 National Park Reports
A second activity we did to prepare for each park was to write a short report. I called it a 3-2-1 report. They had to visit the official website for the park and find 3 interesting facts about the park or its history, 2 plants or animals we might see there, and 1 activity they wanted to do when we were there ourselves.
The answers to the last part of their 3-2-1 reports made up our must do list in each park. Yes, I outsourced the trip planning to the kids. It let them invest personally in our adventure by being a part of the planning, and I as the parent had enough other details to organize that it was an easy part to delegate. I enjoyed watching their excitement grow as they explored on the web in preparation.
Everyone Picks One!
The idea of everyone picking one thing to do was not new to our family. When we had annual passes to theme parks we did the same thing. We couldn’t visit the whole park and do everything each time we visited but we could 3 things and anything else became a bonus activity. Everyone gets to do something they want and the daily schedule isn’t too full, everyone wins. I’ve been asked, as we plan our next week-long camping trip, if they can help plan the activities in the same way.
Let’s Do it Again!
Our trip out west was amazing and totally worth it. It took a toll: it was a full month after we got home before our family felt fully recovered in terms of sleep, school routine, outside activities that had been missed, etc. However, not even three months later, my routine driven kids started asking where we were going next and if they could help with the planning again. That, in my parenting book, is a win!
If you are planning your own epic road trip or national park trip, you can download your own copy of our 3-2-1 report you can use it with your family. It’s flexible enough to be adapted for state parks or other outdoor places.
Pin this for later!
