World School Diaries

We have spent several whole days in the motorhome on this trip through Europe, surrounded by thunderclouds and fat drops of warm rain. One day was so bad that it flooded outside (goodbye flip flop!) and we could barely hear each other over the pounding of the rain on the roof. The rain rushed down the windows in torrents and we wondered if the roof lights would leak.

Then there was the day long thunderstorm that moved into place above us and didn’t shift until the next morning! The deep, reverberating thunder raised our goosebumps and then the cracks and electrifying whips got us looking out of the windows with pretend-laughing “everything will be ok” panic. We couldn’t do anything but sit in place and find ways to amuse ourselves.

And when I say that, I mean the kids! Because as any parent to a 12 and 9 year old will know, we adults can very easily entertain ourselves in times of need. We’ve spent years doing it for the kids so it comes easy when you get the time for yourself! (We would probably just spend the day doing a little exercise in the motorhome (husband), reading, watching a DVD, and drinking wine (me) 😄.

But what to do when trapped in a motorhome for the whole day with kids? Here are some of the big wins we have found:

• Learning – home education
• Reading
• Art
• Colouring
• Eating
• Making food/ easy baking
• Card games
• Story circles
• Films / TV time
• Journaling
• Polarsteps (with the kids, so they can visually see the map)
• Hide and seek (with small toys, not us!)
• Sprucing up our bedroom areas (particularly the kids, it’s so fun to see how they design their nooks)

Allow me to elaborate….

• Firstly, home education… that’s what we’re all about after all! We travel full time so we do education on the road. Math, English and science are core for us, then we mix in history, geography, art, languages… whatever we’ve been doing or learning about lately too!

• Reading time – we created our own book club and pick reads that are age appropriate but also stretch the kids. This makes the books more exciting for them! We do 45 mins of group reading to really try an eat up those chapters. It’s a great way to take out 30-60 mins of a ‘stuck in a motorhome day!’
• Art – 30 mins of art completely distracts the kids.
• Thermal printer for colouring – we have a thermal printer which prints on special sheets without needing any ink. So the kids can pick out some colouring in sheets online and we print them out! On the hit list recently has been One Piece, capybara pictures,L and K Pop Demon Hunters (an old fascination but we watched a show at Le Brasilia camping and it called to our daughter again!)
• Eating… snacks are so good at eating up (pun intended!) half an hour. You can also do fun things like make cornflake cakes (very little had used for a lot of tasty treats!). I accidentally overbought cornflakes at the start of our trip and couldn’t bear to throw them away. I decided to buy a couple of bars of milk chocolate to turn the whole batch into cornflake cakes instead, so we wouldn’t waste them!
• Card games – we’ve been teaching the kids poker, Slam (or Spit), Rummy, Bullshit and chase the joker. An hour whizzes past with these bad boys.
• Story circles – we each start by writing the opening sentence of a story. Then you pass the story to the next person and they read your opener and add a new sentence to it. The same has happened with all of the other one sentence openers, and they keep rotating round the circle. You only add one sentence and should try to push the story on. When you have 4 different heads at work, you never know where the story will go! We cracked up one down with a story about a tree seed that felt like it ended up being out of the Twilight Zone!
• Films / TV time – we bought loads of super cheap DVDs back in the UK before we set off. We spend a fun morning in our local town trawling through charity shops to find some good ones we would all enjoy. And when we’ve had times with bad WiFi or no signal, we pop on a DVD and it’s been so cosy. Other than that, we love The Middle, Modern Family, Netflix films, Malcolm in the Middle etc.
• Journaling – the kids have been keeping journals since we set off, so they update these as and when. For our 9 year old daughter, we encourage her to keep it colourful and fun so she wants to do it!
• Polarsteps – I use Polarsteps to track our journey and adventure, and everyone now and then we’ll take half an hour or so to look through our photos and track our route. We’ve done 2900km so far! It’s fun to go back and refresh otherwise we forget it, we’ve been experiencing so much.
• Hide and seek – one day the kids started hiding a small dumpling toy in the motorhome for each other. It was sweet. And we watched with joy when we realised it kept them happy and occupied for nearly an hour! When you can’t do the real thing, a tiny toy will do.
• Keeping our own areas spruced – the kids have made their own bunk beds into little art collections/ postcard pinboards/ trinket holders/ cosy nooks. When they get into giving their bed area a bit of a spruce, it’s half an hour of calm organisation.