Don't ever let kids miss out on the small things...even when you're travelling!

Of course, world-schooling is a big concept. The premise behind it is simple. Get the kids out into the world and the skills and knowledge obtained organically will be greater than that provided in a traditional school environment.

To be honest, the kids will be fine but it's the parents that need to be unschooled!

We were both traditionally schooled in the 90's in Australia and we knew from the day the girls were born that traditional schooling wasn’t in alignment with our values. 

The first thing we looked into was home-schooling, but that didn’t sit right either as we knew we wanted to teach through life experience, engaging with cultures and the environment. So we started life-schooling with the dream to explore the world. For us, world-schooling was merely a concept that we had heard about but yet it seemed to just feel right. It resonated with our ethos to schooling our children where more is learnt outside the four walls of the classroom than within them. It's a lot easier to learn about history when you can see it, learn about geography when you can hike it, learn about cultures by experiencing them or learn about life by living it.

So we embarked on our world-schooling adventure. We're currently traveling from Greece to Austria and then back south again to Bosnia and Albania. Some days are spent in the Mediterranean sun and others are skiing the Austrian Alps (we're a skiing family that loves the snow). Some days are spent exploring ancient Greek ruins or the Bay of Kotor, while other days will be spent celebrating Christmas with distant relatives. We look forward to every day and the adventures that await. 

But one thing we realised today was to ensure that the girls are not missing out on just being kids. We walk a lot and go to parks but maybe that wasn't enough...so we bought them scooters. Today was an opportunity for us to think about how we can balance regular childhood milestones while world-schooling. Our goal is to ensure our kids don’t “miss out” but rather to offer them as much as we can and allow them to grow and discover their own passions. 

What we didn't realise was the asset these scooters were going to be!

The scooters are handy when we do long walks along the Kotor foreshore but they also help with their leg strength and balance. In a few weeks we'll be skiing in Austria. Of course, the girls are proficient at riding normal bicycles but they're a little too hard to manage in the accommodation, however maybe in the future?! We have increased our daily walking distance from 5km to over 10km because now they just zoom around. 

World-schooling is an ever evolving discovery for our family. We will be connecting with other groups and families as the adventure unfolds but as for now we're doing it our own way and doing what works best for our family. We have no reservations and we encourage all parents to stop and truly consider whether the schooling system is aligned with them...it just didn't for us. In the meantime, the girls are shredding on their new scooters and learning all about risk management!

To reach out or connect find us on instagram @our_freedom_family or ashlee_ajones

Our website, if you're interested in reading other posts is www.ourfreedomfamily.com

From me, that's a wrap.

Matt