Best grades to pull kids out for travel-schooling?

[Anonymous]

Wow, this is awesome. Didn't know this was a thing, but I would have loved to do this with my kids when they were younger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We moved to another country for 3 years just for the purpose of travel. DH had office their, and I found another job. Older kid did 3 years of middle school in American school overseas, and younger started ES there. Overall, it was a great experience. They were sad to part with some of their friends in VA, but two of the best friends came to visit us and they stayed in touch via emails. We lived in the same place for three years. We travel a lot during school year (we had to pull them from the school for a period of 2 week), but they were straight A students and never had problems catching up. We wend to see a lot of Asia and Pacifics. We saw a lot of Middle East: UAE, Oman, Quatar, Jordan and Israel.Then we did long driving trips (approximately 2-3 weeks each) in Europe: South France, England and Ireland, Holland, Belgium, South Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Check Republic, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia. We would fly (or take a train when possible) to a selected country, rent a car, and then drive around (we planned a route in advance). In some places we rented apartments if we stayed longer then 3-4 days, in some it was B&B or local farms, in some it was camping. I would say the last year of middle school was getting harder to catch with school mathe and science. We enrolled them back in VA school last summer, no problem with accepting their documents from the American overseas school.

PP, if you are still reading, We would be on the same timeline with our DS as your older child re doing this during Middle School. Not sure if we would do 1, 2 or all 3 years away. Developmentally, most teens have a strong need to establish and tighten peer-peer relationships. Ours is an only child. Did your older child have any issues with integrating/reintegrating socially? Did they speak the local language of the country you moved to before going there, or learn it on the spot? When you say that the last year was difficult to catch up with respect to math/sciences, do you mean that those subjects lagged behind your VA school, or that your child wasn't able to go on your 2-3 week driving holidays without slipping behind? TIA for your advice!

[Anonymous]

Can you do this in the Summer, or pull them out a few weeks at the end of the school year to start the travel? Most kids aren't learning much the last few weeks of school anyways.

[Anonymous]

20:20 here. We're really hoping to do a longer immersion into another culture for at least 2-3 years. Although my kid loves to travel, the thought of homeschooling for so long during a time when kids developmentally need to seek each other out and establish strong peer-peer relationships, makes me pause. It seems too isolating.

Enrolling him @ an American school, as PP did, would help with integration with peers and preserving a link to the curriculum he'll need to eventually return to.

I feel like when I did middle school, the groups that emerged from the first year stayed more or less in tact through high school. So, maybe keeping DS here for 6th, then traveling for 7th & 8th is a possibility. But would reentry be really tough anyhow? I never knew anyone who disappeared for a long time & tried to come back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your girls will hate you for it.

Np here.

Go away.

You're useless.

I know three separate sets of siblings who are grown now and they are all in awe of their parents/say it was best times of their life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:have you asked your kids if this is something they want to do?

it may be your dream but maybe not their's.

I am finding it rather strange that you have to ask your children about how to live your life. If parents are happy, kids growing up happy too no matter what parents doing. It is also teaches kids to follow your dreams.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous

PP, if you are still reading, We would be on the same timeline with our DS as your older child re doing this during Middle School. Not sure if we would do 1, 2 or all 3 years away. Developmentally, most teens have a strong need to establish and tighten peer-peer relationships. Ours is an only child. Did your older child have any issues with integrating/reintegrating socially? Did they speak the local language of the country you moved to before going there, or learn it on the spot? When you say that the last year was difficult to catch up with respect to math/sciences, do you mean that those subjects lagged behind your VA school, or that your child wasn't able to go on your 2-3 week driving holidays without slipping behind? TIA for your advice!

No problem with making friends or socializing. MS had in place very good sponsorship program where they assigned two kids from the same grade during orientation. He school handled kids transition very well. It is very common for that school that kids come and go, so most of the kids were new at some point and very friendly. I don't know if it is just the nature of the private school or because of the specifics of the region. We had similar experience with new private school in VA as well. The cost of school was comparable with good private school in VA (approximately $18k per child per yer).

Kids didn't learn country's language in advance but was required to take it in school as part of the curriculum. Older daughter was also taking Spanish to keep up with American curriculum. We were able to get around with English everywhere.

It became harder for MS daughter to catch up with math and science when we was taking her for vacation during the school year (but she is a perfectionist, has all As since kindergarten). Most of the time we travelled not on the school vacation time because both of us was working and we were traveling on our schedule, not spring and winter break schedules). No problem with VA public school curriculum this year, they were more like year ahead of VA curriculum ( but there nothing that we can do since older already skipped a year when she was in ES and now already the youngest in her grade. Skipping one more year wouldn't do her any good).

[Anonymous]

My parents did this when we kids were in 3rd and 6th. We lobbied strongly against going but we went. We loved it. Amazing experience, totally shaped my perspectives. We did it again when I was in 11th grade. Who cares how old they are or whether they're excited about it -- just go!