Episode 6: How do I create a worldschooling plan that works for my family?

Show Notes: Worldschooling Q&A – Episode 6

Episode Title: Episode 6: How Do I Create a Worldschooling Plan That Works for My Family?

Hosts: Astrid & Clint, creators of The Wandering Daughter

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Worldschooling Q&A, we tackle a common question from families starting out: How do I create a worldschooling plan that actually works for my family?

Astrid and Clint break it down with real-life examples and tips on building a flexible, personalized plan rooted in your family’s values, learning styles, and travel goals. From navigating parenting styles to embracing “chill out days,” they share what’s worked—and what hasn’t—on their own journey. Whether you’re planning a full gap year or just dipping your toes into educational travel, this episode will help you feel more confident and prepared.

 

🎧 Ready to dive in?

 

👉 For full show notes, resource links, and a breakdown of topics covered, visit: https://thewanderingdaughter.com/episode-6-worldschooling-plan/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Whatever plan you set up from the start.
Just be flexible and adaptthat as necessary.
Because whatever you feel like whenyou first start is likely going to change.
Once you're two weeks into it.
This is Worldschooling Q&A.
I'm Astrid,creator of The Wandering Daughter.
As a traveling family,we've spent four years traveling

(00:22):
full time to over 18countries and six continents.
Wherever we go, we try to learn
as much as we canabout the countries and cultures we visit.
While we didn't coined the term,we like to call this world's schooling.
Using the world as our classroom.
Each week, my husband Clint,and I will answer one question
about worldschooling and share.

(00:43):
Our experiencesof traveling the world with our kids.
Ready to get started?
Great. Let's dive in.
Let's.
Today's question is
how can I create a real schooling planthat works for my family?

(01:05):
Right.
Do you want to sharesome of your initial thoughts on this?
Yeah, I think.
I think, first of all,I think it's important to mention
that, definitely create a plan.
Yeah.
And a plan that works for you. Yes.
Not every plan is going to fit,you know, school or road schooling.

(01:28):
Families are, very diverse.
You know, everybody has different stylesand preferences and things.
So having a planthat fits you is going to be helpful.
And I think the first thingto consider there when it when you say
do a plan that fits you is
really think about and considerwhat your family values are.

(01:51):
Yeah.
That's really important if you've not done
an exercise like this beforewhere you talk about your family values.
It's a great time to do that now.
That's going to come up again and againthroughout your entire world's
going experienceand make sure you get everyone's input to.
Yeah, because your values as a parent

(02:14):
may not be the same values as your kids.
And that's okay.
But just make surethat everyone is feeling seen
or feeling like their values matter.
And where this can really come into playis if for example,
one person valuesdowntime a lot, or recovery time,

(02:35):
and one person wants to just keep goingand going and going.
That can cause strain or stress.
And so just make sure you talkabout your family values.
Another aspect of talkingabout your family values
is you'll see once you start
looking into the world of world'sgoing and seeing lots of families,

(02:57):
you'll see things like there are families
who don't do many activitiesthat are live very frugal
and live kind of very under the radar,and that's totally fine.
But then there's other families that,
that like to do a lot of activities
and like to be very upfront and,and outspoken about it.

(03:19):
And that can have effects on your budget,which we'll cover it in another episode.
But like,there's all sorts of ways to do it.
Our family, how would you sayour family fits into that?
A little bitor how we've reflected our values?
We definitely value.

(03:40):
Variances, I would say.
Right.
Like, wherever we go in, whatever country
we go to, we like to be able to, like,
have something
that's like a little bit more hands on.
But I think you're right.
Like, we also value our downtime.

(04:01):
In fact, we,
you know, we call them chill out dayswhere we're we don't do anything.
Maybewe'll go out to a restaurant and eat, but
there's nothing scheduled,
for that day, and we can just, like,
chill out and hang out as a family,but also just
relax and spend spend time together.

(04:23):
That discovery of downtimethat came unexpectedly, like,
we I remember usbeing in Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
And being a kilometer away from the beach.
Gorgeous setting. Yeah.
And wanting to do nothingbut spend the entire day in the apartment.
Yeah.
And we were just like yeah I thinkdowntime is probably important for us.

(04:45):
I would say to, think about
kind of related to the valuesis just like your parenting style.
We've met familieswho are traveling that really,
give their kidsa lot of autonomy to do things
and go out on their ownand walk around and other families
who are not as comfortablewith the complete freedom

(05:07):
to, you know,or to give your kids complete freedom.
But would rather,
want toexperience things together as a family.
So think about, like where your familyfalls on that spectrum to like,
you know, doing things
together all the timeor giving the parents and the kids

(05:29):
some, flexibilityand freedom to do things on their own.
What do you think about the child'slearning style?
How does that play into, creating a plan?
Oh, yeah.
Like, there's a lot of things,to consider about that,
you know, like, if you're
even just by age, right?
If your child is like a younger kid,you're not going to be doing, like,

(05:54):
an in-depth tour of the,
you know, castle in Edinburghled by a guide,
because they're not going to be ableto, like, sit through all that stuff. But,
I think
reallythinking about how your child learns best
and how you learn best, you know,as a, as a person because it's not it's

(06:15):
not just your children that are learninglike you're also learning as,
as you're doing this.
So thinking about like, do they learn bestwith, with lectures or with like classes
or do they learn best by like being ableto touch things and, and
play with things on their own?
Do they learn best by likewatching a movie

(06:38):
or a bookor reading a book ahead of time? Or.
Or is it more of just like discussions,like we do something together and now
let's talk about what that experience
means to you, or let's talk about like,
you know,we walked through a jungle in Costa Rica.

(06:59):
What were the things that you observedwhile you were there?
What was different?
What were the sights and the sounds?
Something something like that.
I would I would add one thing to thattoo, is also recognize,
especially if you're going to do more of acurriculum based style worldschooling,
where you want to have some sortof structured learning as part of it.

(07:21):
If you've never homeschooled beforeor you've never done that before,
and this happened to us, we realized
quickly into it that,
we have to find other waysof teaching our kids because,
our kids listening to us as a teacher
was not going so well.

(07:42):
So just to put it lightly,
and a lot of a lot of times,you know, a lot of the world's
going families are familiesthat come from kind of more traditional
backgrounds,more traditional schooling backgrounds.
And so if you've never if you've neverdived into the homeschooling before,
I think also be flexible withhow you how you approach that.
And maybe it is at least to start.

(08:05):
Maybe you do need to find, say, a languagetutor or find like,
you know, go to a museumthat has a tour guide or something
that like, can take some of that
learning off of your shouldersor teaching off of your shoulders?
Yeah, definitely. A,
iterative
approach that you should takewith your plan as well.

(08:27):
You know,
definitely have a plan, but
you don't need to stick to
that if it's not working for you.
Like for B, be open to adjusting
and refining and,
or scrapping it all togetherand creating a brand new one.

(08:50):
The the key thing is to be like, observe
what how your familyand your kids are feeling or,
or reacting to like the experiencethe worldschooling experience
and then adjust accordingly.
I think that's that last thing you said.
Super important.
Whatever plan you set up from the start.

(09:13):
Just be flexible and adaptthat as necessary, because
whatever you feel like when you firststart is likely going to change.
Once your two weeks into it, yeah,once you're a month into it, once like us,
two years into it,we had a pretty significant change in
how our work structure wasand how our, our schooling structure was.

(09:36):
So that can change drastically.
And just be flexible with, with that.
But then the last point I'd say
is to like,lean into resources that you have on hand.
I mean,
my website is a good placeto go for worldschooling resources.
I have a whole article about that.
But I also have like a page of,general family travel resources

(09:58):
with the tools and the booksand the things that we've used
or that we recommend for worldschooling.
But beyond that, you know, you have like,
if you're going to be, traveling around,
there's local resources
that you can use, like local communitycenters, local language

(10:22):
schools, classes, local tours companies.
You know, I, I always call myselflike a lazy homeschooler
because I would rather just like,let's go to a museum or let's go do this
tour and check that's like
a, you know, a history lessonfor the day or check

(10:42):
that's like cultural activityfor the day that I don't have to do.
But this other person is doing it.
One thing I want to addto just your world's going planning in
general, is to maybelook at it as a tiered approach,
meaning that maybe your initial approachis to stay at home and just do something

(11:03):
very small, like we talked aboutin a previous episode, or maybe.
And then from there you can graduate tomaybe like a few weeks somewhere,
and then graduateto going to another country.
So your world's going plancan also just show different levels
of, of where your comfort level isand then moving up.

(11:23):
One thing that we did when wewe did our world's going plan is we,
we gradually adjusted to time zones.
Yeah.
So we started in the West Coast
in the United States,and we moved towards the East Coast
and eventually we went, overseas to Europe

(11:44):
and then eventually ended up in SoutheastAsia.
Yeah.
So by doing that,we were constantly kind of just
increasing our time zone difference. Yeah.
And that was just something that we feltwas important to us at the time.
Right? Yeah. So, yeah.
Anything else?
Nope. I think we covered a lot.
Oh, I guess, the main thing,and we say this in a lot of episodes,

(12:08):
in past episodes, too,is, you know, be flexible and adapt.
We we've, it's
worldschooling is.
And travel in generalis can be unpredictable.
And so that's the main, main thing with
your plan is be ready to like

(12:29):
adjust and adapt.
And that includes being okaywith coming back home if you need to.
Right.
That is totally viable.
It doesn't mean you feel that world'sgoing right.
It doesn't mean that itall the experience is for not.
It just means that, like, at that moment,that's what you need.

(12:50):
So be that.
Be forgiving for that as well.
Yeah. All right.
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining uson this episode of Worldschooling.
Q&A with Astrid and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notesfor any links we mentioned in the episode,
and visit my website,
TheWanderingDaughter.com, to dive deeperinto worldschooling and family travel.

(13:13):
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(13:35):
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(13:56):
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Until next time, happy travels. Bye.