One of the greatest hidden benefits of roadschooling occurs naturally — lifeschooling. Sure, conventional public education has its benefits. It provides a steady stream of academic lessons and creates structure. But roadschooling truly has a knack for making education relevant to life. And that includes teaching your kids math in your RV.
In my early years of public education, I remember taking a home economics class. We learned to sew, cook eggs, and bake bread. I loved it. But I would have traded that in a heart beat for a practical course in life mathematics. I’m not talking about algebra and calculus. I’m talking about budgeting, sales taxes, gas prices, credit cards, and more.
And here’s the good news for all the roadschooling parents out there: That curriculum is conveniently built into life on the road. All you have to do is put down on paper what you’re already doing day-to-day with your kids.
Giving Math the Texture of the Real World
As my daughter and I embark on the ever evolving journey of mathematical education, one thing continues to surface in our application: Learning numbers on a page seems completely different than applying them to the real world. A child could be proficient in a fifth-grade math curriculum and still be unable to apply it in any real world situation. If math is confined to the inside of a book, classroom, or rote memorization, it may require a little dusting off before it can benefit them in the real time situations.
Taking math education out of the classroom allows us to weave real-life scenarios into the subject. This will connect the learning mind with the doing mind. As an added bonus, it opens a whole new world of authentic engagement and curiosity.
Playing with Distance, Speed, and Time
Whether your child is learning to read a clock, or utilizing multiplication, distance calculation on the road is a great tool for applied learning. (It’s also a clever answer to, “When are we gonna get there?”)
Personally, we like to use a manual clock and a paper map (or Google Maps) to calculate arrival times. This helps my daughter practice her time-telling, while also using math in an applied setting to determine how long the journey will take. (Incidentally, it pairs nicely with a geography lesson on the road!)
Depending on their math level, you can start to introduce speed to calculate a more precise arrival time. And from there, you can sprinkle in fuel prices to calculate trip costs. This segues nicely into a conversation about budgeting!
Simplifying the Budget for Trip Costs
If the word “budget” invokes a visceral response in your nervous system, you are not alone. (for some of us, it’s hard to imagine a more overwhelming and foreboding term in the financial vocabulary?) “Budget” is laden with so many emotional, economical, and social stigmas that it can be easy to just avoid the subject altogether. But that’s the adult in you. Kids carry no stigma over the word “budget.” To them, it’s about money — a magical thing that’s they’re naturally interested in. So, make it a learning game.
Budgeting for a singular event, like a road trip, is a good way to isolate and simplify the subject. If you’re like me, you could take this opportunity to refresh yourself on healthy budgeting tools, while showing your children the basic mechanics of financial planning and healthy financial literacy.
Step 1: Simplify it to fuel and food.
To start, you may want to isolate one or two items on your proposed trip budget, such as fuel and food expenses. Food budgeting alone can offer days of lesson plans. It can also unveil opportunities for colorful lessons in the kitchen with meal plans and budget friendly recipes and snack ideas.
Step 2: Walk them through meal planning.
For financial planning around food, consider starting with a meal plan. This could be as simple as a list, or as complex as a graph chart. After your meal plan has been predetermined, start pricing out some of the food, and getting an idea of cost. After you estimate the cost of your meal plan, you may want to go back and shift your original menu, by adding a little or taking away.
You can start to see the endless opportunities that these types of lessons can hold for teaching our children! By allowing them to help see the cost of decisions, you really equip them to see the machinery of life.
Letting the Lessons Add Up Gradually
After isolating a few of the fundamental trips costs, you can start to use this as an opportunity for more extensive planning. So many things must be weighed when budgeting for, well, just about anything. This is a skill in itself. I have observed many seasoned travelers who possess proficient skills in project management and business oversight that could rival just about any professional business consultant or project manager. Planning and budgeting has been distilled down to a precise science for many vetted travelers. Involving our children with these fundamentals equips them with vital skills to survive in this financial world that we live in.
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