Category: RV Lifestyle

Cooking in the RV can be a challenge, with limited storage, prep space, and tools. Things get even more challenging when you’re also trying to cater to little appetites, with a limited number of acceptable menu items. As a parent on the road, you have a lot to do. Drive. Navigate. Even homeschool your kids while traveling. You don’t want meals to be a battle. No, you need easy RV meals kids love. But, since kids are involved, that’s not always … easy.

There are two tricks I use to make my own little adventurers happy. The first is to crank up the novelty factor. We’ll make “fancy” ketchup. Use cookie cutters to make fun shapes out of same-old-same-old food. Or make kid-friendly versions of staple items (like the overnight oats below). The second trick is to encourage customer participation. It’s amazing how much more adventurous my kids will get if they are part of the food production process.

Here are five easy RV meals kids love that put these master two tactics into play.

PB&J Overnight Oats

Overnight oats are a fantastically healthy meal for both big and small. They’re high in fiber and protein, with plenty of vitamins and minerals in the mix. They’re a breeze to make, with only a few minutes of prep time. They’re also the perfect breakfast item for kids to collaborate on, as they’re almost impossible to mess up.

The gist of overnight oats is simple: Put oats, nearly any kind of milk, and some flavoring in a small container (we like mason jars in my house, not least of all for the cuteness factor). Then just let them sit overnight. There are plenty of kid-friendly versions, but the PB&J variety below pleases palates both big and small.

Sample recipe: This uber-simple recipe from Quaker Oats is a great place to start. I would add a healthy drizzle of maple syrup with the milk to up the sweetness factor. You can keep overnight oats in an airtight container in the fridge for two to five days, so you can prep ahead of time – another RV bonus.

Brunch Burritos

One of the all-time greatest tips for RV cooking is to plan main courses with two or three follow-on meals that use the leftovers, like making a big roast in the slow cooker, then turning it into a pasta dish, and then turning it into breakfast burritos.

Breakfast burritos combine two things my kids love: food items that feel “funny” or unusual, and things wrapped in tortillas. Tacos work too, but my two-year-old lacks the fine motor skills to navigate tacos without a huge mess. Burritos work better. You can make breakfast burritos using any combination of breakfast items your kid loves, and it’s a perfect receptacle for whatever leftover protein you have. Double RV bonus!

Sample recipe: Do you need a recipe for burritos? Not really — all you have to do is put some scrambled eggs, plenty of your kids’ favorite cheese, and whatever leftover meat you have handy in a tortilla. Other kid-friendly ingredients might be avocado, diced tomato, or some crunchy hash browns. Pro tip: Sprinkle some pickled jalapenos in the grownup version.

Quesadillas

I have written entire articles about the greatness of quesadillas. To me, they’re the perfect easy RV meal. Put cheese and something else in a tortilla, and then brown it. Or, if you’re making your quesadillas just for kids, slap them in the microwave for 30 to 45 seconds to melt the cheese, and be done with it.

Much like breakfast burritos, you can use your leftovers for the protein. But unlike burritos, quesadillas are another perfectly kid-friendly meal to assemble. They can pick their own ingredients, do the initial assembly, and then pass off the finished product to the grownup for cooking. For bigger kids, flipping quesadillas on a skillet or a griddle is a great introduction to kitchen skills. And for the littlest littles, some large cookie cutters will work on quesadillas just like on a PB&J, adding some creative fun factor to the flavor equation.

Sample recipe: It doesn’t get any simpler than this. Take some tortillas, large or small. Sprinkle some cheese. Sprinkle one or two other kid-friendly ingredients. Spray a frying pan (or the tortillas directly) with some oil, and sauté the quesadillas, flipping every two to three minutes.

Pigs in a Blanket

There’s something special about wrapping sausage in a bread product and baking or frying the bundle. Pigs in a blanket are basically in the corn dog food family, too, so should be recognized as an acceptable food item by even your pickiest little ones.

This is also one of my 5-year-old’s favorite food items to help assemble. Playing with dough is tactile, exactly like Play-Doh, so it’s basically educational. And the finished product is as tasty as it is novel. At our house, we even use them for fancy dinner parties, because the prep time to flavor ratio is extremely high.

Sample recipe: This simple recipe has the basics, but you can also take just about any tubed meat, wrap it in any pre-made dough from the grocery store, and then bake using the original dough instructions for time and temperature, checking throughout the process to avoid over-browning the dough.

Hawaiian Ham and Cheese Sliders

Any food item that can be prepped prior to launching the road-mobile, camper, RV — or whatever you’re packing your weekend adventure in — is a win. These kid-friendly baked sandwiches require only a few ingredients, can be assembled by little hands, and take almost no time to prep. They also pair a simple flavor profile with a slightly sweet bread that should work well to whet “wittle” appetites.

Sample recipe: Take a pack of Hawaiian rolls, slice the entire package in half to make two large top and bottom halves. Layer ham and cheese, with the cheese on top. If you’re ready to eat them, pop them in an oven on broil for a few minutes to melt the cheese. Or bring the prepped sandwiches along in the RV fridge until you’re ready to consume. You can serve as-is, or add my family’s favorites: pickles and mustard.

The thought of being on the road comes with so many iconic images that sparkle around the edges. The reality is a little grittier. Living a transient life requires sacrificing all the creature comforts that society has laid out for us in nice, neat rows. We consciously choose the road less traveled. And in doing so we must continuously and actively buck the trends and systems set up for sedentary life. For parents, the most difficult trend to buck might be the modern education system. So, let’s talk about homeschooling your child while traveling in an RV.

Nowadays, there are so many terms for homeschooling in a nomadic capacity. There’s road schooling and worldschooling. There’s travel schooling, boatschooling, unschooling, natureschooling, and deschooling. And lastly, good old homeschooling. That’s the word that my in-laws love to hate.

What the Naysayers Say

For some folks, homeschooling is attached to a deluge of negative associations. So, the push back from outsiders is a force to reckon with. Sometimes, it feels strong enough to break the dam. For example, my in-laws repeatedly remind me how important “institutionalized education” is for my children, but they don’t really consider the immeasurable benefits that education on the road fosters. They will never know what it’s like to learn about constellations under the dark sky of the Mojave Desert — learning where the stars are so bright they are like a blanket of light. They will never know what it’s like to take education out of the pages of a book, and into the most beautiful pockets of the world imaginable.

Peter Gray, the author of, Free to Learn,  is a wonderful resource about the nature of education. It helps remind us on a human level that educating outside of an institution can be freer and more natural. Ultimately, only the nuclear family unit can determine the best way to embark on an educational journey. Everyone else’s opinion is just that: an opinion.

Traveling on the road will give you golden memories with your family. And homeschooling on the road will weave those memories into the core and foundation of who your children are, and how they will see and face the world in years to come.

How to Measure the Immeasurable

The benefits of taking school out there, into the real world, can’t really be measured in a traditional sense. They certainly can’t be measured by standardized tests or report cards. The reward comes in the form of real life skills that only applied learning can nurture.

Homeschooling on the road facilitates an experiential avenue of learning. Learning through travel will take your child’s education and interweave it with what they see and interact with on a daily basis. It’s like the counterpart to institutional education. Instead of learning about things that can’t be seen, touched, felt, or heard in the pages of a book and behind closed doors, your children will be learning with all their senses, fueled by the wonderful and boundless curiosity that children possess. That in itself will attach a positive association with learning. Institutionalized education simply cannot replicate that.

Here’s an article by CBS news on the upswing of homeschooling with your child while traveling since COVID, and the benefits of taking education into the real world.

The Wild Rumpus

The energy that children possess is a marvelous wonder to behold. If it could be bottled up it would be a precious elixir worth more than its weight in gold. But, as any parent knows, their energy can suck us dry into a shriveled haggard thing with nothing left to tend to our own basic needs.

Now, pack that energy up and put it in a tiny space, and hit the road in your RV! I suggest having resources available ahead of time, so you aren’t stuck in a cactus garden after an 8-hour drive, with nowhere to go to keep the kids away from the endless pin cushions at every corner. (Yes, this was us at Gilbert Ray Campground outside Saguaro National Park.)

3 Life-Saving Resources for Homeschooling Your Child While Traveling

As I looked around at our prison of Saguaro Cactuses as far as the eye could see, I could feel the walls closing in around us. We were going to be in this campground for over a week! How would we keep the kids from running head first into a giant precariously leaning cactus? Some national parks are so grand in scope and scale, they can be overwhelming upon arrival. And after a long drive and two small children bursting with energy, there isn’t much time to sit and ponder your next move. Our saving grace came straight from the national park.

The Junior Ranger Program

The Junior Ranger Program is available at every national park in the county, and even most state parks. It’s a site-specific activity filled work book for children of all ages packed with information, history, and interactive activities throughout the park. It offers a path for success to embark upon the exploration of your national parks. After a certain number of activities in the workbook have been completed, you can watch as a Park Ranger officially swears in your child, and presents them with a badge. It’s beyond precious. And if you’re not careful, you will end up like us: obsessive collectors of all the junior ranger badges. We have almost 20 now, and they are our most prized possession.

Participating in the Junior Ranger Program taught us so much, not just about each place we visited, but about each other. We learned together, in an active capacity, applying each educational fact to a real world setting. I learned that being a teacher is so much more fun and successful when I am learning with my children. It makes the event more engaging and interactive. Teachers don’t have to be experts on everything they are teaching. In fact, one might argue that learning would be more fun and informative, if both student and teacher were learning together.

Libraries

Maybe this goes without saying, but libraries offer the most reliable resources for all things homeschooling. We have homeschooled, worldschooled, boatschooled and roadschooled with our children; and public libraries gave us familiarity, routine, and even just a safe place to land on our journeys. Almost every library has a kids corner, and they also carry reference books specific to your area which are great for learning about local flora and fauna, history, geology and so much more. Want local knowledge? Ask your local librarian! No matter where you find yourself when you’re homeschooling your child while traveling, the likelihood is that you’re not too far from a library.

Socialization

This is probably the biggest fear factor that people use to advocate for a more traditional schooling environment. It’s the one thing that we can’t control or replicate as parents. But lucky for all of us, in this post-COVID modern age, finding a social group related to your family’s chosen path in life is available in almost every corner of the world. My husband and I and two children have traveled extensively in and outside of the country by boat and RV. And everywhere we found ourselves, there was a Facebook group of other families doing the same thing, in the same place. Want to take your family in an RV to Mexico but worried about socialization for your children? No problem! There’s a Mexican RV Caravaning social media group for that!