3 Kids And A Caravan
To celebrate the fact that our caravan is almost ready to be picked up, I started our new family “travel” blog yesterday.
I’d always planned to set up a blog that the kids could write on during our big trip. The classrooms at school all have internet access and interactive whiteboards and I thought a blog would be a perfect way for them to keep in touch with their peers while we’re away.
As we’ll be away for an entire school term, the kids schooling is a factor we’ve considered as part of our trip. Our first choice will be to keep them enrolled in their current school and work closely with their teachers to cover the essential curriculum and make use of the natural teaching opportunities the trip provides. I have plenty of ideas on things we can do as part of the trip and the blog is one of them.
We have the support of the school Principal and Deputy Principal in theory but will need to get the final okay from the Education Department next year. I can’t see them saying no. Most educational professionals support family travel as a valuable educational experience. In my mind it makes the most sense to be able to work with their teachers to cover the basics in literacy and numeracy that they’ll miss while we’re gone. If for some reason we’re knocked back, we’ll be going anyway. 
So, back to the blog. My thinking with the blog is that it combines communication with literacy and information technology skills. We’ll also be doing some digital photography, including editing photographs and uploading them to the blog. I also have some thoughts on some basic small business and financial skills if we can find a sponsor for the blog.
The blog, 3 Kids And A Caravan, will also become our record of our big trip. I still intend to blog the trip here on this blog but this blog is MINE whereas the family blog will be for everyone to post their thoughts and experiences on.
While it’s main intention is the big trip, I thought it would be fun to start from right now, tracking the kids reactions to getting the caravan and our first trip away in it.
Singstar Princess wrote her first blog post last night. It was so cute and she was very excited. She chose the pen name “Shell-Bell” for the blog.
I’ve also got a great picture that Trailer Boy has drawn of the car and caravan which I’m hoping to load a copy of onto the blog. He’ll be known as TJ on the blog.
I’m hoping you’ll have time to go and take a peak and perhaps subscribe via a feedreader or via email (both options are up). There’ll be a few posts go up over the next month or so but things may then be a little sporadic until we go away in the caravan again.
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You’re sure to find hundreds of ways to include the kids’ learning into your trip. I can’t understand how anyone could be refused by the dept ed. It seems to me that traveling and seeing how the “real world” operates outside of school is one of the best life experiences you could give a child.
How exciting. I’m a firm believer that travel is the ultimate of learning experiences for kids. Life at your pace.
Let me know when you are traveling through the gold coast.
Peace, love and chocolate
Carole
I’m so excited about the new blog!! I can’t wait to read it. Maybe I’ll have my son read it. He has a blog and it might be fun for him to read a blog by other kids!
I think it’s GREAT that your school is supportive of children taking time away from the classroom and traveling.
I went to an awful high school where absence from school was very much discouraged. The only excuse was illness or a death in the immediate family. I thought it was ridiculous.
Also, I worked at a preschool. There was this father who would frequently pick his child up from school about 20-30 minutes early so he could take his son around NYC and go eat lunch together. They would experience all these different ethnic foods together. The other teachers were disgusted with this–that he was not being responsible with his child. I thought it was amazing and wonderful. The kid was 4! It’s not like he was missing an important physics lesson.
Journeyer - I agree totally. We’re not expecting any problems. I guess you just never know until you apply though.
Carole - I need to start keeping a record of who lives where I think.
Dina - Lleyton (who is Shakob on this blog) is desperate for some comments on his post. I hope you and/or your son gets a chance to drop by. How old is your son? As for high school, I guess it gets a bit harder once you reach that age which is why we wanted to go before our eldest got that far. That’s strange about the preschool’s reaction.
congratulations on your new caravan are you coming to NSW ?
I know lots of people who have their children on caravan road trips - you almost homeschool them.
Friends of ours went for 9 months with 3 children 6 years ago.
I subscribed … we love caravans here and have taken lots of caravan road trips but the longest was 6 weeks pre children..
Best of luck for the grand final too.