Things you learn on the road

We are a family of travelers and we always have been. My husband and I decided long ago that if we were lucky enough to have a healthy, relatively compliant child, we would train him/her to be a traveler as well. The kid took his first plane flight at 3 months old, had a passport by 4 years old and is now on to his second passport. It's important to us to travel and we've made it a family commitment to scrimp and save where necessary so we can travel.

There are so many lessons to be learned while traveling and they're not always the obvious historical "listen to this guy talk about this old building". Many spring breaks, the kid and I have traveled together, just the two of us. Sometimes my husband joins us, when his work schedule allows. The change in the dynamics between just the kid and I, vs. all three of us, is also fascinating. Everyone's personality changes just slightly when you have a shift in the group.

We were very fortunate to spend this year's spring break abroad. We started our trip in Iceland, moved to Scotland and wrapped up in England. As homeschoolers, it's an amazing opportunity to be able to visit some of the places we've studied and Iceland was our academic base. We've studied Vikings this year, as well as nearly six months in plate tectonics and geology. There are few places better to really visualize and understand the movement of the earth's plates and how that effects humans.

However, more important than the specific countries or what we saw, we all learned a lot about traveling together. I felt compelled to write every day and wished I'd brought along a more blog-friendly tech device! Some tidbits of our rules for travel:

1) It's not about the places
It is, and it isn't. While the places certainly gave us the roots of our conversations, we learned more about each other just by being together. 18 days, 24 hours a day, in confined spaces is really enlightening! While I spend hours upon hours with the kid every day, this was generally free time to chat, explore and learn without a plan. We had fantastic conversations on boring bus rides, had little arguments in underground stations and made fun of dad's insistence on seeing every restaurant in London before picking one to eat at! We learned about looking right before you cross a street in London, eating what's in front of you when you're hungry and that sometimes you just have to sling on that heavy backpack and bear it, because there's no other way to through the train station.

2) Timing is key
This will likely be our last major overseas trip for a while. We picked this age (11) and this year (6th grade) specifically because we can sense that the kid is rapidly entering the "OMG my parents are so annoying" stage. We wanted to savor the moments, enjoy the time and not fight the whole way or argue about getting off the computer. We were right and chose well, however there were tiny glimpses of the future. He definitely missed his friends and talked every day about what they might be doing while he was doing something else.

3) Whatever they enjoy is what they enjoy
It's hard to resist and not force one more history lecture, after all you're halfway across the world! But it's important to let them enjoy whatever they enjoy and share in that with them. The kid was delighted with major high protein meals and so happy to eat lamb on several occasions. When you talk to him about his favorite parts, everything starts with food. Whether it's this delicious bakery in Iceland or that steak in Scotland, all roads lead back to food. When you're a 5 foot 2 11 year old on a growth spurt, that's ok!

4) Divide up the choices
I had the kid research each location and put down his top three choices of what he wanted to do in each city. This gave him significant buy-in to the trip and also got him excited about each location. We divided up choices so that everyone got a little something to check off their "must do" list. Each day, if there was something one of us didn't want to do, there was a tidbit of something


5) Take lots of pictures!
In the digital age, there's no reason not to! We took over 1700 pictures. Some silly, some encouraging a photo bomb, some practical or historical, some for school, some well posed. Take them all. I promise, you won't be sorry you did!

We talked a lot on the trip about everyone's bucket list and had some hilarious moments discussing why an 11 year old even needed a bucket list. Yet he was the first to add to his list- declaring our next trip to be Wales, Paris and Rome. He was also the first to tack on "If I can bring a friend next time." Like I said, timing is key. I think we nailed this one.

Signing up for another year

The interesting situation of Academic Homeschooling means that we have natural breaks in our school life where we contemplate "Should the kid go back to school?" In our area, most schools are K-5, 6-8 and 9-12, though we do have a few 6-12 schools.  Since on paper, my son is finishing up 5th grade, it was logical to have the discussion of whether or not he should go back to traditional school in 6th grade.

While I think every homeschooler has these moments, wondering if it's time to send the kids back to the brick and mortar building, it seems to come up more in families that are not homeschooling against a system. We have friends that have always homeschooled and always will, up until the day that Junior moves out for college/trade school or marriage. Our other friends that fell into homeschooling due to medical reasons, academic reasons, military reasons or a host of other situations, wrestle with this every single year. Is this the year? What about next year?

We live in a district with a high proportion of charter schools that have lottery-based admissions. The most likely entry point is 6th grade. By default, most people who are looking to make a change- either from homeschooling to school or from school to school, have to make it in the winter of 5th grade. It's a huge decision because whatever you choose feels like it locks kids in for the rest of high school. It's painstakingly difficult to look at your 10 year old and try to determine what kind of person he will be in seven years and which high school is the best option.

After all the thinking, the pros and cons lists and the debates and discussions, we decided to forget about it for a year. My son is happy, sleeping well, as access to a huge amount of experiences, curriculum and life discoveries that he wouldn't have sitting in a classroom 8 hours a day with two more hours of homework. As I've said before, my irregular pentagon doesn't fit nicely in a square box anyway. I'm confident that the time will come when going to traditional school is a no-brainer and doesn't cause us to feel so tortured by the decision.

In the meantime, why would we want to give this up?