Tag: kids

Carschooling

Carschooling /kärskooliNG/ noun

  1. Education or training received in a car

Well our autumn school schedule is filling up with weekly therapies (occupational, speech, social thinking) and other activities (music, ballet, space club, soccer, nature walk co-op) for my kids and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with how to fit in all that I want to cover in school with how many hours we will be spending in a car.

Per week I will spend about 2 1/2 hours driving to and from specialized therapies that are a 30 minute drive from my house. Then my kindergartener and I will spend about 3 hours per week sitting in the car waiting for my son at each hour long session. So basically a full day of school just waiting.

How can I maximize this time and make sure we are still learning? Carschooling.

Playdough in the car while waiting.

First, a key piece of equipment to the carschooling endeavor: the lap desk.

I keep the lap desk in the car and it gives us a surface to work on while we wait in parking lots. One thing that is nice about carschooling is that my daughter and I do get one on one uninterrupted time together while we are waiting.

Second, I made a list of things we could do that are kindergarten appropriate.

  • Travel reading games and activity books
  • Dot to Dots, colour-by-number (math, penmanship)
  • Math workbooks
  • Origami
  • Knitting/sewing handicraft
  • Writing practice
  • Card games, other travel-sized games that have us counting, taking turns, making decisions, observing, etc.

Third, I made Go-Bags for different days of activities so that we’d have variety. In each Go-Bag, I put a selection of the items above. I found it easier to have multiple Go-Bags and assign each one a day, so that I don’t have to spend any time packing and re-packing the same bag. Having different items in each bag keeps it from getting stale.

I’ve mostly used bags I already had around the house, but I was short one, so I invested in a bag and I must say, it’s the perfect bag. The bag itself is so light, it has great pockets, but also one big main compartment. It has a laptop pocket. It can work to ride on top of a carry-on suitcase for airplane travel. It has two water-bottle holders.

Fourth, I created music and podcast playlists so that while we are driving we can listen to our music composers for the term, or cover a subject like literature in a different way by listening to the story on the drive instead of sitting at home and having me read it outloud. Then I scheduled it in. Scheduling it in means no decision-fatigue and also, less fighting and whining from my kids about who gets to choose what’s playing on the stereo.

Tuesday morning drive (30 minutes there and back): Listen to Winnie the Pooh on audiobook. We are listening to the Unabridged version read by Stephen Fry, Judi Dench and more. When we’ve finished this one, we will listen to other classics of children’s literature appropriate for my daughter’s Kindergarten year – Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit tales) and The Lightning Thief from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series to complement the greek mythology we are reading at home.

Tuesday afternoon drive (30 minutes there and back): Listen to Science/History podcasts. Some podcasts to listen to include:

  • Tumble (Science)
  • Curious Universe (Science)
  • Reach (Science)
  • Geology Rocks (Science)
  • Brains On! (Science)
  • But Why (Science)
  • Nature Guys (Science)
  • Homeschool History
  • Little American History
  • The Past & the Curious (History)
  • Forever Ago (History)

Thursday drive (20 minute drive there and back): Listen to term’s composer. This year we are listening to California Artists – see my post here about Composer Study.

Friday drive: Circle Round podcast (tales from around the world).

Last, I decided to schedule in 1 hour of car errands on Thursdays during my son’s occupational therapy because it’s located in a spot really close to a bunch of places I do need to visit weekly. The go-bag for Thursday mostly includes independent activities my daughter can do from her carseat. I will often also have our dog with us these days so errands I can run without getting out of my car are perfect!

  • Once per week grocery pick up from Target curbside pick up
  • Fill up car with gas
  • Goodwill drop offs
  • Library book returns and Hold Pick Ups (curbside)
  • Bank ATM

Have you ever done carschooling? Which podcasts and audiobooks did your kids enjoy? W

Warmly,

Heather

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