Ready to Road School? Planning and Prep - Blog Post Part1

My husband and I have been waiting for this day for a LONG time!  We’ve come to Colorado for many years now…with and without babies!  Nothing bad about having babies on vacation and we enjoyed those moments for sure.  But we always said…”when MiniM is 3 years old, potty trained and taking less naps, let’s DO THIS!”  

Do what?  Take our sweet family, our school and hit the road.  

Last year, we brought a good chunk of learning with us.  Check out my past posts here: 

A Homeschooling Vacation - Part 1 - The Planning

A Homeschooling Vacation - Part 2 - The Learning

But this year, my husband and I decided to explore a little more before landing at our family cabin for a few weeks.  And I promise to share our adventures with you later.  (if you haven’t “liked”/followed us on Facebook/Instagram, be sure and do so.  I post there daily.)

But before that, I want to share ... 

How I planned for such a big homeschool adventure?

Here are 2 key points to keep in mind when you start to plan.

~ pack light (learning materials) Blog Post 1

~ use the world as your classroom Blog Post 2 - coming soon

Packing light:

I made sure that I brought along reading materials that didn’t take us lots of space!  For example, our Jesus StoryBook Bible has pages of stories versus packing a handful of read-aloud books.  

I subscribed to Scholastics Weekly Reader (months before hand) and received enough of these awesome materials to pick and choose from.  I made sure that they were relevant to what we were doing or doing to do.  For example, the seasons aren’t very spectacular in Austin Texas, but we were about to see the colors of Autumn throughout 2 of the states we’d be driving through.  So I made sure to pick out Weekly Readers that supported “the changing of the leaves”, pumpkins and cooler weather.

I am NOT a big fan of workbooks and worksheets, but road school is the perfect time to use them.  

Individual notebooks were a great way for me to organize what workbook pages my Kindergartener and 2nd grader would be using.

And I knew that if the ‘big boys” had these, I’d better make one for littlest learner.

If they had a way to organize their work, I needed the same.  And this is what I came up with.

This is just an expandable file folder.  And it held just about everything that I needed it to!   If it didn’t fit in this or their notebooks, it didn’t come!

I made sure to bring along some Legos and a few of our favorite board games that might fill in the gaps for Phonics and Math.

Just for FUN - I also printed and packed scripts for "Reader's Theater".  This activity is GREAT for learning in the car.  Each family member is assigned a part in "the play".  We read and practice the script in the car until we are all fluent and comfortable with our parts.

THEN...we perform it either at a picnic area or on the deck of our cabin.  Or maybe for the squirrels at the campsite.

This single folder held Math lessons for both J and N.  I made copies from one of my favorite resources (Instant Math Centers)

I focused on using Calculators with my 2nd grader and simple, fun addition practice for my K kiddo.

 And for copy work, art and handwriting, this resource is FUN and perfect!  I chose this Draw, Write, Now that uses Animals and Habitats for pond and river animals.  Because if we are going to be surrounded by these animals, why not learn how to draw them!

And that's just about it!  Be sure and check in next time...I'll tell you all about how I planned to "use the world as our classroom"!  It took ALOT of research, but every minute we spent researching, where we would stop and what we would learn, made it SO WORTH IT!

Happy Learning with your Little Ones!