We’ve been roadschooling for almost four years now, and it has been the most beautiful experience for our family. I know we’ve built learning foundations that will last our children’s whole lives! With all of the questions that I get about homeschooling on the road, I thought it was time for a Roadschooling 101 post!

I’ll share what we’ve learned about roadschooling, how the legalities of roadschooling work, why roadschooling is so wonderful for our family, and all of the roadschooling resources I can! Let’s dig in.

What Is Roadschooling?

So first things first in roadschooling 101: what even is roadschooling? Well, it looks different for every family. But the fundamental idea is just learning while traveling. For some families, this might mean having kids in public school and taking advantage of road trips for hands-on learning throughout the year. For other families, it looks like following a set of very structured homeschooling curriculum while traveling around the country and supplementing with museum visits, etc.

For our family, it means that we really focus our learning around what we’re seeing and experiencing as we travel. We do use some limited curriculum throughout the year, but our primary learning is hands-on, tailored to the places we’re visiting, and experiential. I’ll share some more examples of what I mean by that further down.

Is Roadschooling Legal?

Yes!*

Roadschooling legality is extremely similar to regular homeschooling legality. In general, roadschooling families will follow the laws of whatever state they are domiciled in.

Traveling families have more flexibility in choosing their domicile state. That means that homeschooling laws will probably be a big part of which state you choose to domicile in. To check your home state’s homeschooling laws, here here for this great map from the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HLDSA). Pay attention to state laws with requirements that will force you to travel back to your domicile state, like annual testing.

Where roadschooling legality gets a little gray is when you stay in another state for 30 days or more during the school year. The HLDSA recommends following the homeschool laws of any state where you do so. That isn’t a challenge for states with no legal notice required, but can be complicated for highly regulated states. One way many traveling families avoid this is by simply not staying in any one (highly regulated homeschool) state for 30 days.

*I am not a lawyer and am not qualified to give legal advice, but if you need some the HLDSA is!

Why Is Roadschooling Amazing?

Now that we’ve gotten the paperwork part out of the way, we can talk about why roadschooling is such an amazing way to learn.

Roadschooling gives an absolutely unparalleled opportunity for grownups and kids alike to experience hands-on, unforgettable learning. There’s such a big difference between reading about the lifecycle of a sockeye salmon and spending the summer in Alaska watching other wildlife feast on a salmon buffet, catching your own silver salmon to fry and eat, and observing how different the river seems after the salmon have spawned and died. There’s a huge difference between memorizing that Wilbur and Orville Wright were the first in flight and standing on the hill with a replica of their design and walking the physical distances of their four first successful flights.

There is absolutely no shame in book learning and we recognize the privilege involved in being able to learn this way. But we also believe that there’s no substitute for the depth of your learning and the way it will be retained.

What Does Your Roadschooling Look Like?

Okay, so you’re loving this roadschooling idea, but you want to know what it actually looks like for a family who’s doing it. I’m happy to share!

First, I’d love to offer up the state worksheet / travel journal for roadschooling kids that I designed. I created this worksheet because my roadschooling kids aren’t that interested in the state flags or state flowers of places as we travel. Honestly, are adults even interested in that stuff? We spent all summer in Alaska and didn’t even see a forget-me-not. But our kids do remember all of the fireweed that we saw and how we turned it into fireweed syrup for their pancakes. That’s the kind of stuff I want them journaling about, so I created this resource for other families who feel the same:

State Worksheet / Travel Journal for Kids

$2.00

If you’ve ever wished for an easy way to capture what your kids learn as you travel, this is it! Forget other state worksheets that require boring, irrelevant details like the state flower. Let’s write about what we learned and experienced! This state worksheet digital product includes leveled worksheets for kids: one two page log…

State Worksheet / Travel Journal for Kids quantity

Add to cart

Category: Printables, Roadschooling

Tags: Homeschooling, Printables, Roadschooling

That worksheet is a great example of how we roadschool because it takes actual experiences we have and uses them to do things like practice writing!

We are a secular family and we definitely lean towards unschooling in our homeschool, which means that we aren’t strict about a curriculum. BUT we do use a select few curricula (especially for things like math). Here are a few of our favorites:

• Blossom & Root science curriculum (we’ve especially loved Plants and Dinosaurs as a roadschooling family!)
• The Good & The Beautiful math (I’m not linking them here because their company values do not align with my own. I only use their free downloads that I have printed through The Homeschool Printing Company)
• Curiosity Chronicles for world history (they are consistently recommended as the most inclusive, least euro-centric history program)
• Oh Freedom for U.S. history
• Blossom & Root language (we particularly enjoy their read-aloud lists, my kiddo found the writing a bit repetitive)
• Kindergarten sight words & spelling workbook that both of my older kids have liked
• Bob Books for learning to read
• Various other workbooks for learning skills as they come up, like cursive and Spanish
• Online classes using Outschool for niche interests like vet science and mythology (read my Outschool review!)

We also do a lot of interest and project-based learning. Here are a few examples of what that’s looked like:

• Wrote, printed, and bound a book of original poems
• Studied mythology and created different types of art based on the stories we learned (and visited the Parthenon in Nashville that’s in the main pic for this post!)
• Created a business plan and sold handcrafted comic books
• Made art outside inspired by the places that we camp
• Experimented with science projects and Home Depot building kits
• Learned about music history and listened to musicians from each era
• Maintain a “WonderWall” in our house with questions the kids want to research as we have time (I learned about this idea from my friend Fran)
• Studied the Civil Rights Movement and visited several important historical sites
• Read books set in real locations and then visited those places (Anne of Green Gables in PEI, for example!)

Project-based learning is one of my favorite ways to teach and my kids’ favorite way to learn. Roadschooling makes it so easy and fun to think of and execute interesting and creative learning ideas.

One of the ways that roadschooling differs from a vacation is that we prioritize learning in the stops and experiences that we choose. Here are some of the regular ways we learn as we travel:

• National Park and State Park Junior Ranger programs
• Museums in every city (have you downloaded our best museums for kids list?)
• Libraries in every city (Check out my post about getting a non-resident library card)
• Mapping out our travels on the wall
• New-to-us local foods as we travel, either in restaurants or by foraging
• Cultural centers to learn about the Indigenous people of each area
• Field guides for hiking and identifying local flora and fauna
• Books, podcasts (here are our faves!), and documentaries about the history and notable people/events of the area

Here are some types of in-person lessons and classes we’ve used (local homeschool Facebook groups and libraries are excellent for finding these!):

• Horseback riding lessons
• Pottery class
• Cartooning class
• Dance classes
• Lego club
• Botanical garden plant class
• Rock climbing
• Vet camp
• Zoo camp
• Lizard camp
• Library story and music times

And these are our favorite learning resources for days when we’re traveling or just hanging at home:

• Kid Podcasts (these are our favorite educational podcasts!)
• Educational apps on a shared iPad (I’ll write a post about this, too!)
• Audiobooks for drive days
• Educational Yoto cards (do you have a Yoto player?)
• Outschool classes (read my Outschool review!)
• Books on YouTube (when we can’t access physical library books, we look up read alouds on Youtube!)

How Do I Start Roadschooling?

If you’re already homeschooling, then roadschooling won’t be much of a change! The best part about being a roadschooling family is that coming up with interesting and unique things to learn about is an absolute breeze as you travel. The trickiest part is that regular activities and lessons involve more research to find. But it’s not impossible!

If you’re new to homeschooling in general, my first recommendation would be to start with what’s called deschooling. Deschooling is just a fancy way of saying “take some time off from schoolwork and learn about how homeschooling isn’t about re-creating public school at home.” Things that can be a surprise to new homeschoolers as they deschool include:

• Schoolwork takes way less time than it does in public school, so you don’t need to spend all day sitting down to “do school”
• Kids who have been public schooled may struggle with entertaining themselves all day, but they’ll get so creative with practice
• Parents have grown up with really rigid ideas about what constitutes “learning” and may need to teach themselves to see learning happening in other ways
• Kids tend to retain things they care about and not what’s “on grade level”

And a whole lot of other things 😉

My other advice is to find your community of roadschooling parents who are past the roadschooling 101 stage for guidance and inspiration. Join some Facebook groups (I LOVE this Secular and Decolonized group). Follow some other parents (find me on Instagram where I’m always sharing roadschooling ideas!).

Ultimately, I think the most important thing you can do is whatever you need to do to reassure yourself this this way of learning is enough. Because you’re the one who needs to feel confident!

Any Other Roadschooling Resources to Share?

I have a list of my favorite roadschooling items and my favorite homeschool books that I will continue to add to as I continue to learn myself.

And come find me on Instagram so I can cheer you on <3

Disclaimer: Product links in this blog post may be Affiliate links, and I will earn a small commission for each purchase made through these links at no extra cost to you. Affiliate income helps fund our family travel and allows me to keep creating inspiring family travel content for you. I so appreciate when you use my links to make purchases you would have made anyway.

To learn more about who we are, head here. For more posts about how we homeschool our kids, try these posts:

Follow our adventures on Instagram:

Get an email when we post and never miss an adventure: