This question is asked multiple times a day on the socials, and rightly so, when we are leaving the conventional way of life, you worry about the impact this will have on the most important people in your life… your kids!!

In my year of planning our big adventure, marking out all the exciting places to go, How I was going to educate my kids was running parallel with all my research and scrolling time. It was always on my mind…. sound familiar?

I cannot tell you what educating platform is best for you, I don’t think there can be a one size fits all program for any family.

However…

I can tell you what we do, what we have tried and what works for us as a family.

One thing I didn’t expect was that we would shift and change our educational methods.

Just like our constantly moving lifestyle, how we educated our kids, is also quite fluid.

We swap and change our chosen platform based on where we are, how are kids are doing, and what is available to us.

It is also determined by work schedules, as this determines how available we are to teach vs time for self directed learning..

Madelyn is still learning to read and lately hasn't wanted to read her readers, she prefers novels, so she takes the lead and borrows novels from the library. We read them together and she also reads them independently in the evenings.

There are some constants, however, that we always revert back too, and I will talk about this also.

Maths and English

Before we left, I sought out the advice from my kids school teachers (my kids were in private school before we left for our trip). I also have loads of family and friends who are teachers and so I picked their brains as to what would be best.

They all had different ideas and advice for me, which I appreciated, and took on board, however one resounding opinion was this…

“the kids will learn so much on the road, if you just focus on English and Maths you will be fine”

Later when we met with the head of middle school, via zoom, for Hannah’s high school interview, they too echoed this opinion, and said if we can just keep up with these 2 topics, it will be beneficial for Hannah’s transition into high school in 2026.

*One of the best things about home-schooling is that you can do all your school work in the comfort of your bed, or in Hannah's case here, Mum and Dads bed.*

IXL Learning Platform

So with this information, we found a program that focuses on these 2 topics and that program was IXL. What we like about IXL is:

It aligned with the national curriculum (here in Australia). so my kids can do a different lesson (we call it lessons, IXL calls it skills) and it is teaching them all they need to keep up with the national standards in their year level.
Its tick box method is good for me, because I can watch their progress and work out how many lessons they have left for the year.
Sometimes we do 5 or more lessons in a day, sometimes we don’t do any for an entire week. It is entirely based on our family’s work and travel plans. For example; when we were in the Daintree Rainforest we wanted to use our time to explore the region. I love the flexibility.
Our kids are really motivated by the gamification keychain awards system. They get a variety of keychains as a reward for their achievements in different aspects of learning.… Some of the rewards include
- acknowledgement for days practiced,
- skills mastered,
- answering a certain number of correct questions in a row,
- days practiced and
- time spent working on a skill.
After they finish their lesson (what we call it) they are excited to see which keychain they have gained.
I get a detailed summary from IXL sent to my email with each Childs achievements and suggestions on what they should work on next.
I love that it is just English and Maths, because I don’t want the other topics as these are fully covered by the places we go on our travels.

There are so many opportunities to learn on the road. My kids love learning about VR, as pictured here. There is a great little VR experience at the information centre in Julia Creek, was only about $5 and it is a virtual cattle muster... how cool!

Twinkl

We don’t just use IXL, for our learning, I also have a membership for Twinkl and this has been helpful. My kids were familiar with Twinkl because it was used as a recourse at their school.

I do love Twinkl and their worksheets are awesome.

My only criticism is there is so much available, it is time consuming to sift through it all, however when I am in the mood/zone I quite enjoy it, and enjoy finding activities I know my kids will love doing.

We no longer have our printer with us (RIP) so it is a bit annoying having to print out the worksheets at the library, while juggling the kids wanting my attention, but I make it work.

Twinkl also have a lot of links to PowerPoint presentations and video lessons which have come in handy.

National Curriculum

I also regularly check in with the national curriculum, which is available to anyone online, to see what topics are focused on/covered for each of my kids.

For example in year 5/6 there is a big unit on democracy so we aligned our travel plans with this unit in mind, and spent a week exploring Canberra and visited Parliament House.

*Hannah at Parliament House. We enjoyed the tour and learnt so much. We then had a picnic lunch on the rooftop.. A very memorable family day.*
*Here is a link to one of my Facebook posts about our time in Canberra*.

Sustainability is a huge part of the national curriculum (across all grades), which includes learning about the environment, eco-systems and actions for a sustainable future,

I am reassured because I know that we cover this topic almost daily on our travels. by visiting beaches, rainforests, the outback, museums, environmental centres and loads of botanical gardens… etc.

*Hannah and Maddie exploring the Botanical Gardens in Cairns. We love visiting and playing in Botanical Gardens there are so many beautiful ones in Australia, we are completely spoilt for choice.*

Book Work, Handwriting and all that Jazz…

Book work was a lifesaver at the beginning of our travels. We just had so much going on that trying to navigate a new learning program, like IXL was really challenging.

I don’t know the correlation, but it just seemed that trying to settle into our new travelling lifestyle and computer learning didn’t mesh well (for us).

Thankfully, using a simple exercise book from Kmart or an Excel workbook from Big W or Office Works, did wonders. Particularly for Maddie who is in year 1. She just enjoyed working through the questions at her own pace, in her own way and most importantly in her own time.

*Hannah is all smiles, getting into her maths for the day, in the sunshine with loads of fresh air.*

If I could give you one piece of advice, in your planning stage,

Try not to stress too much about having your ducks lined up, before you leave.
Be open to a variety of learning options,

and if this is the first time you have ever home-schooled (like me),

Make sure you give yourself and your kids a lot of grace and time to adjust,

It is a huge adjustment, especially when paired with a new lifestyle of living on the road.

Here is a link to the IXL Maths and English learning platform.