School is Where You Park It..

School is Where You Park It

The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round! How I miss the easy days of circle time and sock puppets. There is no use in trying to turn back the hands of time; we have three boys that have a love of learning and we have to stay five steps ahead of them at all times. Therefore, recently we loaded up the RV and rolled out to Greenville, South Carolina for the Southeast Homeschool Convention. We scored an incredible deluxe site at one of our favorite places, Travelers Rest KOA.

Now if you have never been to a homeschool convention it can be overwhelming. That said, lets break down how to get the most out of these events, find materials that work for the road schooling family, and have fun in the process.

Wait!!! First thing is first. In some ways you gotta treat this like attending a large RV Show. What do I mean by this? Always plan out your strategy prior to attending.

1. Pre-register for the event and print out the vendor list and speakers schedule. This way you are able to highlight the vendor booths that you are interested in getting more information from and which speakers that you feel have information that you need to be successful in your homeschooling journey.
2. Wear your most comfortable shoes, because you will be doing a ton of walking.
3. Don’t forget to bring a bottle of water and a brown bag lunch. The convention halls are notorious for expensive food.
4. I usually bring a rolling cart to carry away all your curriculum finds. Who wants to be stuck carrying around heavy books and what not?

Whether you are homeschooling, road schooling or a mixture of the two, there is always a need to have new and exciting curriculum available at your fingertips.

The boys really loved Sum Blox! What an awesome and fun way to learn math.

The problem is when you are living in an RV, space is at a premium. In my opinion, it is best to have curriculum that is web-based, DVD lead or requires the least amount of physical books as possible.

So what did we find?

Simply STEM (not pictured)

-This is a web-based program that can be started at any time and is geared toward students that are ages 6 and up. This program offers coding/tech instruction at all levels and provides grading for projects that are assigned to your student. It is a self paced study that is completely web-based.

La Clase Divertida (not picture)

-We have struggled with providing our kids with a foreign language curriculum in the past. We have tried a few different programs that have not seemed to stick for us. La Clase Divertida offers a DVD lead curriculum that was developed by homeschoolers.

BookShark

-Why have I even bothered to list this curriculum? Yes, as their title infers, this curriculum is book heavy. (Yes, pun intended!) However, after speaking with Jennifer, one of Booksharks’s awesome reps, she was able to explain to me how this could possibly work for us while on the road. She went through a sample 4th grade curriculum bundle with me and pointed out how many books I can access on the web through my local library or kindle purchase that eliminates that need to carry all those books with us.

All in all we found the convention to be fairly good in their diversity of curriculum offerings. This will certainly not be the last convention that we hit this year. We look forward to trying some of these programs out and providing you with a review in the future. If you have any experience with any of the curriculums listed that you would like to share, please feel free to comment or email us.

Stay tuned….

Tia Sims – CEO of Soulful RV Family