Homeschooling Away From Home

A little less than 2 weeks ago, we packed up and drove to Texas for a long-term stay. Packing for 3 months, 2 seasons and 2 totally different climates is hard enough. To complicate things though, we know we will need to leave space in the van for another baby on the trip back to Montana. While I'll probably end up shipping a box or two back, I'd like to limit that if at all possible, so I was faced with the task of carting 3 months of homeschooling materials in as small a space as possible.

Primarily, this involved copying worksheets and putting them into two 1 inch binders (the binders are split by date, not by subject, so that I was able to just get out one binder while we were on the road). I have another 3 inch binder that I put the girls' completed work in (keeping everything is not required in either Texas or Montana, but I'm a first time homeschooler and I'm paranoid about proving what we've been doing, so I'm keeping things for now--I'm planning to clean out most of it at the end of the year). Then I needed supplies. I packed up a small storage box with our other school supplies (we also use these boxes to pack up medicine, thermometers, nebulizer tubing, and any other medical stuff we might use when we go on trips). It was a little more difficult to make sure I had all the supplies I needed--I started with the basics: pencils and a sharpener, a few pens, a 24 count box of crayons, a 12 pack of colored pencils, an eraser, scissors, glue stick and blank notecards. Then I looked through what work we would be covering while we're gone and put together necessary supplies that were specific to those lessons (math manipulatives, etc...). After all that was packed, I only needed to add a couple of small books for history, and a pack of construction paper (I had already put a pack of notebook paper in the 3 inch binder).

All together, everything fit into a pretty small space (it all fit into a larger box with baby supplies and clothes we had brought). In the hotel, it takes up one small section of the TV cabinet.

As far as actually completing the work, we are just following our regular daily schedule since we aren't on a vacation with a lot of new things to see. The only slight difference is that Sedona is going back to her old Montessori school 3 days a week while we're here. Sierra either does her work while Sedona is gone, or during Sedona's nap and I don't have Sedona do any extra (besides her speech work) when she gets home on those days.

I love having the flexibility to take off without worrying about someone else's schedule or minimum attendance requirements and their school hasn't been interrupted at all.