You’ve made decisions regarding your route, must-see landmarks, and finances, and can debate the merits of camper trailers vs. caravans for hours.
There’s just one major stumbling block – the children’s education.
People tell you what a wonderful educational opportunity it will be for the children, and that they’ll learn so much, and you’re sure they’re right – but it still feels like a major undertaking. For six months, or a year, or maybe even more, you’re going to be the one providing their education.
I’m here to tell you that you’ll be just fine. We’ve homeschooled our five children from the start, and we’ve travelled on and off for their entire lives, and the pictures I’m sharing here have all been taken on our travels. Just whetting your appetite! Homeschooling is fantastic, and when you’re travelling it’s so easy – our main problem has been picking and choosing the best opportunities from a flood!
You have three options – maintaining enrolment at their school, distance education, or homeschooling.
Travelling while maintaining enrollment at your child’s school
This can be a fantastic, seamless option. The school keeps your child enrolled, gives them an exemption from attending, and usually provides you with some schoolwork to do while you’re away. For many I’ve met, keeping a journal and doing some basic maths work is all they’re given (anyone else find it worrying that this is enough to replace 3-6 months of schoolwork?).
For those with no long-term interest in homeschooling it’s probably the best option – IF it’s available. It depends on state legislation and the attitude of the school itself – while some schools will send you off with excitement and congratulations, some schools will just not do it.
If they won’t or can’t, then it’s onto the other options.
Travelling with Distance Education
This will be the first (and sometimes only) option you’re given. It sounds easy – they’ll do the all organisation and grading, and usually most of the teaching, and you just have to submit the work. My advice?
Don’t do distance education if you don’t have to.
Yes, that’s blunt. But distance ed, which is basically public school at home, can be horrible for travellers. Here’s why.
- You usually have to have nearly daily internet reception. Portable wi-fi can be astonishingly expensive, and if you’re planning to go anywhere off the major highways you won’t have reception anyway. This limits your travels in so many ways. If you’re having an amazing time at a national park you still have to pack up and get back to town in time for Monday morning’s lesson. Not fun.
- You need to know where you’re going to be to receive regular mail. If you’re happy to stick to a very strict schedule, and positive you won’t deviate from it, this is possible. But again, it severely limits your flexibility. It’ll only take a few times of hanging around a town that has proved to be exceptionally boring yet massively expensive, waiting for your next package to arrive, for this to seem really inconvenient. Some providers will now give you a whole term’s work at a time, which is a great improvement.
- It’s really boring. Honestly, I’ve seen the work, and it is mind-numbing. After sitting in on a live distance ed internet lesson as part of a tour, my children were horrified, and unanimously said they would never do it. It seems to be a guaranteed recipe for frustrated parents clashing with bored and rebellious children.
- Distance ed divorces learning from the adventures you’re having, and makes it much more likely your children will not want to do anything remotely school-ish about your travels. Goodbye family travel journal.
There are definitely positives too – you don’t need to worry about writing a homeschooling plan or being approved, and all the work is provided for you complete with schedules. You can also access teacher help when you need it. However, I really don’t think that it meshes well with travelling, and many travellers I’ve met have only spent a few months on distance ed before becoming frustrated with the limitations and changing to homeschooling.
The following schools will enroll students who are homeschooling while travelling
Distance Education does have one big advantage – it covers the legal side of things automatically. However, homeschooling is legal everywhere in Australia, and here’s what you have to do to register in each state and territory. You don’t have to register in each state as you pass through, you just have to be registered somewhere. Start by reading about your home state.
Quick Summary – Most states require you to submit an application, with a plan of what you’re going to do. In some states, someone will meet with you to discuss that plan, then either recommend changes that need to be made to it, or approve the plan. If they don’t meet with you they review the plan that you send in, and will either approve it or reject it. That’s all for 12 months. At the end of that year, you’re expected to provide the next year’s plan, plus examples of the work your children have completed in the last year (just to prove you haven’t been staring at the wall for 12 months).
Homeschool registration while travelling is different again, and can be confusing. NSW and NT specifically mention travelling, and state that you are not allowed to homeschool and must enrol in distance education if you intend to travel for longer than a term. Tasmania says you can travel if you intend to return as a permanent resident. Two families from WA have contacted me because WA refused to register them when they were going travelling, and seemed content to have them go unregistered.
Each state’s regulations state that you cannot enrol to homeschool if you aren’t a permanent resident of the state. And if you don’t have a fixed address, you’re not.
For example, this is what the ACT has to say about travelling –
Can I become registered or renew my registration while my family is not residing in the ACT?
No. Home education must be provided from the ACT home base listed on the registration certificate. If you are travelling at the time of registration or renewal you can re-apply for provisional registration on your return to the ACT.
What are you meant to do in the meantime in states other than NT and NSW? Nobody’s really sure. If you’ll only be travelling within your registration period it shouldn’t affect it, but you may find you don’t qualify for registration when your registration expires.
If you’re refused registration or told you’re not eligible keep a record. I know a number of people who have re-registered or enrolled at school after a period of not being registered and they’ve had no issues at all, so don’t fret – they’ll most likely just be happy to have you back in the system.
Writing a homeschooling plan for your application
Writing a plan doesn’t have to be a horrible, agonising process. It’s simply to show the authorities that yes, you have thought about this, and how you’re going to make sure your child learns what they ‘should’. Remember, you don’t have to stick slavishly to the plan – if resources and plans don’t meet your needs you can change them.
Stumped by homeschool registration and planning? Check out the Australian Homeschooling Summit – it contains 8 workshops that will help you write a fantastic plan quickly and easily, with a minimum of stress.
Picking Australian Curriculum approved resources for core subjects can be a great easy way to get your plans done quickly. Your child’s school may be able to recommend resources, and if you’re planning for them to go back to school this will help keep them in line with their peers.
You can then supplement these core resources with activities you plan to do – for example, put a visit to Questacon into the science section, and a visit to the National War Memorial into the history section. Any activity widely accepted as educational will enhance your plan.
Most of the websites listed in the state resources in The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling in Australia give you guidance and example plans, so make sure you explore your state’s resources thoroughly – or simply ring and ask for assistance.
Now you have your basic plan, it’s time to enhance it with real-life activities.
A Travelling Homeschool Curriculum
The more you can tie your child’s education to their interests and life and show them the practical applications the more they’ll remember. Travelling offers an unbeatable way to do this – as you explore different areas you’ll incidentally learn about history, geography, geology, science, meteorology, natural resources, sociology, politics, economy. If you dig a little bit deeper than the surface you have a curriculum that may not be particularly organised, but ranges far wider and deeper than anything school can provide.
Honestly, as long as they’re covering the basics don’t worry about spending endless hours each week on bookwork. When you’re in fascinating, beautiful areas with dozens of interesting, incidentally educational activities to do no-one wants to do worksheets! Instead, add quality activities to your daily life.
You’ll be surprised how much fun you can have and still be able to categorise it as educational. Here’s ideas for the key learning areas to get you started.
- Put the kids in charge of your budget for the week
- Ask them to keep a car logbook, and work out your fuel efficiency
- Keep an accommodation tally, noting where you stay each night, the price, and work out averages
- Play board and card games – Monopoly is great for mental maths
- Add up the numbers on numberplates while driving
- Take tallys and make graphs of what you encounter – animals sighted, cars and caravans, how many trailers on road trains.
- Memorise Australian poetry and songs. Think Our Country, or The Man from Snowy River – my kids have learnt both of these and more, and I love listening to them recite. It gives me shivers!
This is so easy to cover when travelling. Physics via riding rollercoasters anyone?
- Learn about the animals, plants, weather and geology of areas.
- Keep a nature journal
- Study chemistry via cooking
Health and Physical Education
- Learn about nutrition by shopping, meal planning and cooking (and eating).
- The physical opportunities are unlimited – snorkelling, swimming, cycling, hiking. And don’t forget running around playing impromptu games with other travelling kids.
Humanities and Social Sciences
- Geography……..well, that’s easy! Don’t forget physical geography. We love our paper maps that we trace our journeys on.
- History – ditto! Every area has its own history museum, and there’s amazing displays in some rather small places.
- Drovers, bushrangers, the gold rush, convicts and crazy explorers – Australia has it all, and it’s easy enough to learn about.
- Keep an Australian timeline or Book of Centuries (it may need to be a Book of Decades with our short recorded history).
- Social Sciences – what better way to learn about social issues than to see them? Make sure you learn everything you can about Indigenous history, culture and current issues. Learn about the isolated life in the outback and the services needed.
- Listen to a range of music and discuss the aspects – genre, singing, instruments
- Visit art galleries, taking advantage of tours and guidebooks
- Take an instrument along if they’re interested – we had to say no to a piano, but we have a violin and a ukulele, and the children have taught themselves with books and free online resources
- Get the kids to reenact historical scenes they’ve shown interest in.
- Play with art mediums – we carry a basic kit of coloured and greylead pencils, a few fineliners, and watercolours. Paint and draw what you see – buildings, flowers and leaves, whatever grabs your child’s interest.
- Use clay you find for ceramics
- Use natural materials for art – collage, model with mud, weave coconut palms etc.
- Go to music festivals and local performances
- Use them. Considering that the opposite is usually hardest (stopping using them), this is easy.
- Take note of differences in technologies in areas – the lack of internet is rural Australia is very noticeable to those who take high-speed, accessible internet for granted! Ditto for health care, power and water treatment.
- Look at the different ways areas produce food, fibre, and electricity and gas.
- Discuss the sustainability of each of these ways
- Auslan (Australian Sign Language) is so much fun, and you will meet people you can practice with. Learning songs is a great way to pick up vocabulary. I’ve laminated song instructions and keep them in the car. There’s also plenty of Auslan songs on YouTube that can be learnt with the aid of an Auslan dictionary. Plus there’s a great free Auslan series here from Asphyxia! Or choose a foreign language, and do it as a family. MOOCs are great for this.
- Buy a child’s picture vocabulary book in your chosen language and learn the names of everything you have. Label them (our toilet was labelled ‘latrina’ for months). Play games where the kids need to answer a question about that language before they get their dinner / shoes
Extra travel/homeschool tips and tricks
If that’s not enough for you, here’s some extra travel-specific homeschooling tips!
Visit the information centre in each area and you’ll be able to collect most of what you need for a thorough education – they usually contain information about the geological and human history, flora and fauna, and notable citizens. The maps, pamphlets and other resources are great for journaling. It’s also the easiest way to find out what there is to do in an area and plan your time accordingly.
Many homeschooling groups will be happy for you come along to their outings if you’re in an area for a while. They can provide a fun day out, give your kids a horde of other kids to play with, give you other parents to chat to who are also homeschooling, and introduce to you an area in a way that only locals can.
The best way to find local groups? Definitely Facebook. Try searching for the town + homeschooling. If that doesn’t bring anything up then try other terms that the area is known by – for example, Far North Queensland for Cairns, or Limestone Coast for Mount Gambier.
Australia is a big country, with lots of empty space, so you’ll be spending a lot of time in the car. In the car you have a captive audience, so make the most of it.
Audiobooks are wonderful, and it’s so easy to download classic stories and listen to them as a family. It’s even free through most libraries via BorrowBox and Libby. Honestly, we’ve reached the end of a 500km trip and had the kids complain about getting OUT of the car because we’re at a riveting part of the story!
As mentioned earlier, we have laminated pages with Auslan songs and poetry to memorise, plus travel games and boredom busters. The kids will also pack what they want to take on that trip – card games, craft projects etc.
What we DON’T have is electronic babysitters. No iPads, no DVD players, no phones. If you’re convinced you HAVE to have them for your sanity (you really don’t) then please make sure you fill them with quality options – documentaries, ebooks etc. Yes, children really do find all that stuff insanely interesting once they develop a taste for it – and far more rewarding than inane games. If you need more ideas, there’s even a book specifically about carschooling. Enjoy!
What about homeschooling high school while traveling?
Personally, I think homeschooling older kids is great. Preschool and early primary can be so boring as you go over and over (AND OVER) basic skills. I’ve just about finished teaching my five children to read, and I never want to do it again. But my daughters are so much fun to work with! They’re doing work at a level that interests and challenges me, and they’re very independent – they generally just need me to help them find resources and to lend a helping hand.
Worried you can’t teach your kids something because you don’t know it? It doesn’t matter, there’s always a way to learn. The ability to teach yourself new things is an invaluable skill, and one that will be useful for their whole life. Help them find quality resources, help them learn to use them, and be around to bounce off ideas and listen to discussions.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are online courses typically provided by universities. They’re wonderful, and they’re FREE! My girls have done courses about anatomy and physiology, ancient history and archaeology, and Spanish.
Strengthening weak areas
Nothing beats one-to-one tutoring.
If you know your child is struggling in a certain area, travelling provides a great opportunity to help them master it. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t mastered the subject yourself – one of the myths of modern education is that you need to be an expert to teach anything. Learning alongside of your children can be just as much help, and an awful lot of fun.
Find videos and tutorials online that cover the skill they’re struggling with (Khan Academy is great), buy a few basic workbooks, and help them combat their problems. They’ll feel so much more confident when they reach the a-ha moment and can confidently do tasks they once struggled with, and it will empower them to teach themselves.
And I think that really should do it. I hope you now feel inspired and empowered to take charge of your child’s education. Travelling really is a wonderful lifestyle, the learning and experience you will all gain on it is invaluable and I hope you take the big step and have a wonderful time!