We are road school warriors and have been doing it for nearly a decade! We've traveled all across the country, and one of our favorite road school destinations is Alabama’s Beaches. Here are six tips for road schooling based on our family’s fantastic adventure in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.
1. Consider Your Need for Internet
Do you want your road schooling adventure to include a virtual classroom? Are you using a digital curriculum? If these things are essential, you’ll want to find accommodations that make the internet available.
We don’t use a virtual classroom or an online curriculum, but WiFi is still essential. Once when we stopped at Gulf State Park, we found several new-to-us creatures. We took photos, and when we were back in the hotel room, the boys looked them up online and wrote an informal report. We were also able to find a documentary about them on YouTube.
2. Bring Resources to Leverage Your Location
It’s easy to bring resources from home if you’ve got them. We brought books about wild weather and dolphins with us to the beach. The diverse ecosystems of the Alabama Gulf Coast offer plenty of opportunities to dive into the unique flora and fauna of the area.
What books, workbooks, projects, or ideas can you bring from home that tie into the unique features of the place you visit?
3. Leverage the Edu-Tainment Opportunities in the Area
The best part about road schooling is not that you can open a workbook on the road but that you can use the resources in the area to see, touch, smell, and feel your way through a learning experience. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are home to various educational activities and attractions.
The Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo offers unique opportunities, such as feeding giraffes or holding sloths. Our youngest drove a catamaran with Sail Wild Hearts, and our oldest took to mapping out how sailboats can run faster than the wind (hello, physics).
There are myriad learning opportunities along Alabama's beaches, from Historic Fort Morgan to the Alabama Aquarium at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. You could spend a week there and not get to them all.
4. Rely on Others to Help Teach the Kids
One of my favorite ways to road school is to take advantage of others smarter than me.
When our boys fed giraffes, the zoo trainer gave them the scoop! Why the two giraffes are different sizes, why their tongues are rough, what they eat in the wild, how they prepare food at the zoo, how they have giraffe temperaments, and so much more.
Park rangers are always a go-to resource, and Gulf State Park offers guided walks and free weekly programs. Historic Fort Morgan also has a great self-guided tour and map of the fort that the kids can use.
Have them hold the phone and tell you what they find at each stop on the map. Teaching is, after all, one of the great ways to learn.
5. The Only Way to Fail is to Avoid Trying
That’s a message for your kids and you. You’ll try books you hate and programs the kids think are boring and “lame.” You’re going to be excited about things the kids hate and hate a few things the kids are excited about.
Some days, you’re going to feel on top of the world, and other days, you’re going to wonder if you’re failing them. But you’re going to keep trying, loving, and pressing forward.
One of the most valuable lessons hubs and I try to be an example of is that failing is OK!
“Failing” gets a bad rap; “trying” is always the goal, and the outcome always teaches us a lesson.
6. Skip a School Schedule; Embrace Your Daily Routine
Why? Because Murphy’s Law is a real thing.
As a family that travels full-time, we don’t have a school schedule but embrace routines. For example, we usually wake between 6:30 am and 7:30 am. Everyone starts with alone time when waking up (thank goodness we all agree on this).
As I write this, it is Saturday, which means my hubby (Dan) works out in the morning while I make breakfast. Any formal learning like math happens before lunch. This evening is my yoga class (virtual means I can do it on the road), so Dan makes their dinner and talks more in-depth about the questions that came up today. Then we all have family time together.
Do our routines get wonky and messed up? Yes, but not very often. If we had a "schedule," though, it would be in vain. Routines mean that when something happens – good or bad – we can adjust to it easily.
Math at 9 am every day? It’s just not going to happen because we might have stayed up late the previous night to watch a meteor shower. Or we might have 9 am. Family Camp with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. But math sometime after breakfast and before lunch? That’s easy to accomplish.
