Homeschooling for traveling families
So you’re getting ready for the big lap of Australia and you’re up to organizing the kids schooling.
It can seem overwhelming at first, but with the right tools, road-schooling can be really enjoyable.
These are my favourite products that I have been using over the last 3 years of traveling with school aged children. If you would like to read more about how to register and get setup for homeschooling in Australia, I have more on that here.
The Books
Getting the right workbooks for the year that cover the curriculum is really important, the Targeting series teaches the subjects in order and build onto the next skill. The workbooks you get from Aldi or a supermarket are more for practice of known skills, or testing, these full curriculum books are better for Learning new skills. Remember you are teaching things they’ve never done, not testing them.
Travel Journal
Keep record of their travels.
Targeting Maths
For grades Prep - year 6
Targeting Spelling
For grades 1 - 6
Targeting English
Lower, Middle & Upper Primary
Targeting STEM
For grades 3 - 6
Targeting HASS
For grades 3 - 6
Learning Aids/Tools
The fun part of homeschooling, the learning toys! What you need depends on the age your teaching, but get the basics for time, money, and Math units to start and build from there. Kmart has a good selecting learning tools as well.
Plastic C-clip chain
For patterns, counting, measuring
Base 10 MAB Blocks
Light Foam Design
Whiteboard & Marker set
Save paper when working out
EasyRead Time Teacher
Easy to read clock dials
Australiana Alphabet Cards
Reusable whiteboard cards
Learning Puzzle Box
Multi-activity educational set
The equipment
This little ink printer has been bouncing around under the bed storage for over a year and it still works every time I need to get out. I recommend it for a lightweight small printer/scanner.
HP Printer
Small & light printer/scanner
HP Colour Ink
Replacement Ink
HP Black Ink
Replacement Ink
Free Online Resources
Once you start looking there are so many free resources out there for homeschooling, here are a few goodies we use:
- ABCYA.com – Free online games by grade
- Prodigy Maths – Free wizard/magic maths game
- spellingcity.com – Free spelling games, enter your weekly spelling words.
- Learning Songs – Jack Hartman, catchy learning songs maths and english.
- Teachers Pay Teachers – free worksheets and projects made by teachers.
- ABC Education – Videos & games for kids learning
- Storyline Online – quality books read by famous people on video
- Scootle – the whole Australian Curriculum with resources
The Paid online Resources
Some really good paid services we’ve used are:
- Mathletics – Curriculum based online math activities that check your answers.
- Nessy – Learning phonics, reading and spelling games.
- Reading Eggs – learn to read games
Summary
We have thoroughly enjoyed our home education experience, the kids growth both academically and personally has been wonderful to watch. We achieved what we set out to do for the year and I am so proud of them (and me).
I am thankful we were consistent with their learning and got it out of the way each day and onto adventure. Once we were in that routine it was just normal and there was minimal complaining. We still took off school holidays and the first few days back at it can be challenging, but be consistent and the work just gets done. We kept flexible and adapted where needed. We had solid “end of the year” goals for each child and we just worked towards those.
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