How I'm Doing Homeschool While We Are Traveling
We've been here in Argentina for almost two months now and I want to share how we're doing homeschool. In case you don't know, my daughter is 7 and autistic. She was diagnosed when she was three in 2020. She had been evaluated by our county and placed in a special education preschool class. She started January of 2020. We all know what happened March of 2020 - COVID hit and I had to homeschool her. It was really hard for everybody, just like it was for most parents and kids. We really struggled and I decided I wasn't going to homeschool her ever again if we had other good options in the future. I just didn't feel like I, as an ADHD parent, could handle homeschooling well. Obviously she was three and we had some communication issues which didn't help.
Fast forward to now, living in Buenos Aires. We looked into some options for school for her. The original plan was for her to go to school here locally, but there were some complications. Apparently it's hard to enroll a child for less than a year here. It's also hard to get aid for a kid who has any kind of special need unless you're going to pay out of pocket for it. After meeting with an education consultant, it looked like private school (and all the associated costs) would be the best option. About a month before we moved here, my husband came for two weeks. After talking with locals, we realized we could not get the kind of accommodations she would need. At home in Tennessee, she has an incredible school who work so well with her accommodations. They are excited to have her back when we're home in January. Having that same standard of care wasn't going to be possible here and since we're going to be away for half a year, I bit the bullet and decided I was going to homeschool her.
How I'm Doing Homeschool While We Are Traveling | Spelling, Sight Words and reading
When we got here, I knew she would need structure and routine to help her thrive the most. It took about a month for us to get a printer here, but after we got one we were able to get the ball rolling. I went to Pinterest and found so many free resources as well as some that I bought, all of which I will link for you at the end of this post. Her school at home sent a packet for the summer of reading ideas and a high frequency word chart including what their spelling and reading words are going to be and some activities kids could do during the summer. I noticed our daughter was having an issue with some of those spelling words halfway through first grade and I knew it was mainly because she was bored so we're reviewing those words with her right now. We're not quite onto the second grade words yet, but we will get there and be on the same track as her classmates when they start school in August. As far as reading goes I know she can already read chapter books in her head, but I also want her to read out loud because that is a really important skill to have. She's reading chapter books out loud to me, averaging 1-2 chapters a day, depending on the length of the chapter.
How I'm Doing Homeschool While We Are Traveling | Place and Animal of the Week
I am trying really hard to stick to things she enjoys, but also focus on curriculum I know they're working on at school in Tennessee. For example, in second grade, they're going to be working on animal life cycles, the water cycle and plants. So while she's not doing exactly what her classmates are doing, I'm trying to incorporate things that will be on par with them. I am keeping track of everything we are doing in a notebook. Every week we are highlighting an animal. We learn about their life cycle, and any interesting facts about them. This is a hit because she loves animals. We're also highlighting a location of the week. Right now we're focusing on South America because that is where we are. Naturally our first location was Argentina. We are making books about each location, so she has fun books to look back on later.
How I'm Doing Homeschool While We Are Traveling | Life Skills
Another thing we are focusing on is life skills. This is an area I've always wanted to focus on with kids, regardless of when they're in school or not. They need to learn how to tie their shoes, bathe themselves, make at least one meal, do a load of laundry, do the dishes, etc. She's already learned how to fully give herself a bath, the whole deal including washing her hair, conditioner, body, dry off afterwards, everything. I know she isn't the only kid that struggles with life skills so I'm actually working on downloads for those with step by step directions, so stay tuned for that! Right now we're working on tying shoes. This one has been a bit of a struggle and honestly, as someone with ADHD who hates to tie their shoes, I totally get it.
How I'm Doing Homeschool While We Are Traveling | Daily Schedule
We normally start homeschool at about 10:30 after we've finished breakfast and cleaned up our apartment so everybody's in a good headspace and have plenty of space and energy to work. We usually start with spelling words and ease into some low key coloring to keep her brain stimulated, but not to overwhelm her. We work on her location of the week book where she can color it and then she reads the pages out loud to me.
She likes to include some of her toys in school, which I'm totally on board with if that helps her get through it and we normally work on part of her animal life cycle during this point. We have found so many different worksheets for animal life cycles, that she can do without me directly supervising. I'm trying to give her as much autonomy as possible which is helpful for me as well since I need to keep the baby entertained, but I am there if she needs me.
After doing 3-4 activities, we try to have a 15 to 20 minute break where she can do whatever she wants. Often I take the baby out onto the balcony and they both run around. I don't have him on the balcony while she's doing school because it's very loud and can be very distracting for her because of her auditory processing issues. After the break, we get back to work. Usually, this is when I have her do some of her reading. We read 1-2 chapters from one of her chapter books which gives her the opportunity to develop the skill of reading out loud. After reading we try to end school with math. This isn't either of our favorite subjects, but I try to find things that are engaging and fun that she wants to participate in. Currently we are working on subtraction. We use play doh and we make 10 little play doh balls and she draws a card that has a number on it and depending on the number we squish that many balls and see how many are left. This hands on math has been great for her and something that we are going to continue doing.
Like I said, we aren't using any specific curriculum instead making sure we're covering math, science, language arts, social studies, reading, writing, in various ways. Honestly, I'm just kind of winging it! I feel better knowing she's headed back to school in January, so anything that I miss she can catch up on in the second half of the year, but for know I feel like we're doing ok. I've linked any of the homeschool materials that we use below.
