When we began roadschooling him last Fall, he had class for several hours a day, four days a week. Everything was very structured, morning exercises followed by learning a new letter, a small miscellaneous project, typically art related, and then we’d finish the day with a major lesson about whatever: deciduous vs. evergreen, the Civil War, entry level evolution or sometimes just exploring a trail or going for a bike ride.

All in all, the roadschooling experience has worked out very well for us so far.

Once he’d finished his letters and learned the joys of “secret sounds” like th, sh, ing, etc. and started to be able to read basic words, we rolled back the lessons for a couple weeks of Winter Solsticing. When we returned to schoolwork in January, he only had one task: read two or three pages a day from a few very basic books (highly recommended by us is A Hole is to Dig, hilarious and very easy for first time readers). Now and then I’d give him a sheet of math problems to sort out, but by this time he could already add, subtract, understand negatives, and even do some multiplication. In fact, with only a short lesson, for fun and largely to satisfy curiosity on my part, he was able to solve a simple algebra equation last January. Then he went off to visit his grandparents in Pittsburgh for some of February and March. They are intelligent people themselves, and I would consider all of their children to be very well educated and capable of learning, not just knowing, and so when he returned, going through two or three pages a day would only take him a few minutes. He continues to read, five or six pages a day now, and I feel very good about where he’s at with the whole making letters into sounds into words thing.

He still does a math sheet most days as well, though at this point all I can think of to do is give him bigger numbers to solve as he’s pretty much got the whole concept down.

We’ve recently begun drawing pictures for him and then having him spell those words out, to get him into the idea of learning to spell and figure out how to write words from scratch as well. And once I get over my appendicitus recovery, I plan to take him somewhere every Thursday or Friday to give him an “experience lesson”, much like we were doing in the beginning. Think the local science center, kayaking, or a hobby shop.

All in all, the roadschooling experience has worked out very well for us so far. I was hesitant at first, precisely because I know that my son does have quite a bit of potential, and I didn’t want to stifle that by trying to juggle my own work and play with his learning time as well. Nothing further from that could have happened, and I know that, aside from the infinitely valuable time we’ve spent together while he’s young and still completely in love with his parents, he’s also gaining so much real world knowledge — everything from how to read and subtract to how to safely cross a road, do dishes, and recycle — that I don’t think any school could have given him this much.

At this stage, much of his roadschooling is largely hands off for me. Much of that has to do with the fact that he can pick a lesson up very quickly, but also because I don’t teach him something for 30 minutes and then have him go do it. I teach it to him once, ask him if he understands, and if he says yes, I let him get to it. If he comes back from doing the assignment and it’s completely wrong, which is rare, then it reinforces the idea in him to ask questions before you dive into something, otherwise you’ll end up doing it twice because you were in a rush.

All in all, I can’t recommend the whole roadschooling experience enough for anyone who’s considered the fulltimer lifestyle but has young ones and is worried about the impact it’ll have on their education. If that’s not enough to convince you though, think about this: we’ve all heard of the guy with a PhD who’s made a career as a bartender or a Barnes & Noble employee, but how many people who’ve gone to trade school have found it impossible to get into carpentry, plumbing, or whatever they were seeking? Sure, you can get highly trained by reading books and paying wads of cash for an 8×10 full of capital letters, but experiencing something is the only sure fire way to know you can do it.

I thought I’d review some of the accomplishments we’ve seen Tristan achieve over the past few months. First of all, I think it should be noted that we began his First Grade year on September 25th, so it’s only really been two and a half months of schooling. In that short time we had basically planned to re-introduce the letters of the alphabet to him, of which he previously only had a loose general knowledge of, and to read some fairy tales and cover a little bit of math. We even had a planned curriculum and everything, which was quickly thrown to the wayside.

After two weeks of learning letters, both how to write them, recognize them and what sounds they made, Tristan began showing a whole lot of interest in learning how to read. This is not Waldorf methodology, and they don’t really start to learn to read until 2nd or even 3rd grade in many cases, but Tristan was definitely diving into the world of reading and I could easily remember being very young, trying to make out what signs and billboards were trying to tell me, so we moved forward with it. That’s one of the greatest things about homeschooling, your child can learn at precisely his own pace. When you have a classroom, everyone learns at the median pace, or that set by the teacher. Hence many kids who can’t keep up get left behind and geniuses grow bored.

We were also reading fairy tales to him in the beginning, associating a story like Snow White with the letter of the day, S, for example. We had a bunch of fairy tale books that were supposed to be authentic, the real stories that were passed down orally through the generations. Here’s what I’ve discovered: people in olden times were idiots. Every store typically ends with two people getting married, usually without ever meeting each other or based solely on looks and ugly people are always the bad guys.

We ended up naturally swaying from reading stories every day as Olivia began to teach him some Spanish and I began focusing on subjects more scientific and historic, often based around the region we were in. For example, in Memphis we discussed the Civil War and talked about slavery and racism and why people are the way they are. During the Fall in northern Pennsylvania we talked about trees and the differences between coniferous and deciduous trees.

We never got around to really focusing on math, but instead that was just something we did for fun, and not particularly during “school hours” but just whenever. Tristan would sometimes ask me to write a bunch of problems down for him to solve, or while we’re walking around to just ask him to figure things out. He’s grasped mathematics much more than I’d anticipated, being able to understand the concepts of fractions and negative numbers and even multiplication. Am I saying he would solve 1/8th x 23? No, of course not, he’s only 7. But understanding the concept of what a 1/3rd is compared to 3/4ths and so on is the key here. That’s not to say he can’t solve problems, your basic addition and subtraction are easy, even problems like 30 – 40 or 1,000 + 279 will produce correct answers.

Ah, correct answer production, what every father dreams of in a child.

Homeschooling was the most daunting aspect, for myself, of this entire trip, and to be honest, it’s been one of the most enjoyable parts of our new life on the road. Everything just comes so naturally, it’s not about extensive curriculum planning at all and forget about even needing a syllabus. Just letting Tristan lead the way by seeing what he is able to learn and what he might not yet be ready for has done the bulk of the work.

If anyone has any questions about roadschooling, at all, please feel free to fire them off in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer!

Anyway, everyday I learn a letter. First I did the letters of my name. T-R-I-S-T-A-N.

Oh yeah! And I learned how to make pumpkin pie and how to skip stones. It was really fun and I think it’s really fun on this roadtrip!

We’re already in Texas and I really like this place. Cool, that’s all.

Not for me as much, I was just the teacher, but for the boy Tristan, today was numero uno, the first day of First Grade. He’d been looking forward to it for a couple of weeks now, as the other kids had gone back to school in the beginning of September, but we were only now getting around to it by the middle of the month.

Breakfasts were had, showers were taken and teeth were brushed as we found ourselves sitting down and starting the school day. “Alright, school’s starting,” I proclaimed and we both jumped into our individual seats across the table from one another. “First, we light a candle.”

This day, as every day would, we spent a couple of minutes talking over the morning candle about the previous day’s events before beginning with our morning music lesson, followed by some exercise and a little light meditation. Guitars, a bike ride and sitting Indian-style, and all before 11am.

We spent the day making workbooks out of bailer twine and construction paper, painting their covers with watercolors under the sun and on the picnic table that came with our little plot of land for the week. Afterward, snacks over a story featuring the letter “S” — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to be exact — was to follow. Tristan and I made lunch together — handwork, home-ec and health education all at once — and then wrapped the day into a close with him practicing writing that very same spindly letter.

I worked for a few hours and he was free to play around the farm, riding his bike in furiously fast loops, making sandstorms out of the dirt for his GI Joes and all day long constantly sounding out words, anything he would see, trying to decipher which ones began with or ended in the letter “S”.

“SSSSScissors. SSSSmiles. SSSSSSnake Eyes.”