{Guest Post}
Written By: Kate Troxell from Troxell Five Travels
When you’re a family of five and your children are all under eight years old, people tend to think you’re a bit crazy to travel as often as we do. Truth is-we are crazy, but crazy about giving our kids experiences they will benefit from for a lifetime. As much as we dream to leave behind our mainstream life to travel full-time, we remain a suburban family with kids in public school. Like I am sure for many of you out there, it’s a conflict between responsibility and dreams. We are learning that there is a way of achieving both. How do we balance school and family travel?
When it comes to school (or should I say, missing school…)
We try our best not to take them out too often. In order for them to not miss weeks at a time, we try our best to align our travels with long weekends or holiday breaks. When our kids have a week off for April break we always take them out for a few days the week before break or the week after, this way they only miss 2-3 days of school, but we get to travel for ten days or more! I always print out my kids’ school calendar and highlight the possible holidays and days off that we can stretch out for a trip.
Another sneaky tip is that if we don’t need to leave our house for the airport until later in the morning we will still send our kids to school. Even if we pick them up by 10:30am, they go. This way they get credit for the day and it isn’t considered an absence. This also gives them a chance to gather any schoolwork they’ll need for the trip and gives us some time to do last minute packing, getting luggage into the car and cleaning up the house (I have to come home to a relatively clean house) without the two big kiddos in our hair.
Our school-age kids are still pretty young (kindergarten and second grade), so we have always received a lot of support from their teachers, thankfully. In the summer, when we receive our child’s teacher placement I send the teacher an email. In this email, along with the usual blurb about my kid and their personality, I explain that our children will be missing some days during the school year for family trips and that we will always give the school advance notice. I also tell the teacher that if they feel our child will suffer academically we are happy to take along work. There is always plenty of time on an airplane or at the airport to do this. Our kids always have more enthusiasm about doing schoolwork when we’re traveling than they do at home on a regular weeknight.
Last year we traveled for ten days in Iceland. Our son’s teacher asked that he keep a journal. He wrote in it every night while we were there, sharing details of each day (what he did, learned, ate, saw) all from his own perspective. When we got home we printed out pictures and added them. It came out great! When he returned to school he presented it to the class. We have now kept the travel journal going. Not only does it show the teachers that while we travel our kids are still learning a ton (probably more!) but it is also an amazing keepsake for us!
(Skogafoss, Iceland)
Lastly, there’s always summer break. It is so easy to get sucked into feeling like your kid needs to be signed up for this camp and that camp, but we try to limit our commitments in the summer, so that we have freedom and flexibility to travel. It’s an expensive time to travel, as it is an ideal time to visit most places, so we tend to stay nearby. We live in New England, which is especially great in the summer as so much of New England is coastline. Additionally, my husband can’t take off week after week of work (weird, right?) so often it’s just me with my three kids. Staying nearby is just logistically easier. So my advice for summer travel is to find places you could visit within driving distance.
(Spruce Point Inn, Boothbay Harbor, Maine)
If your heart yearns to travel and you have kids in school, have no fear; it is still possible to go on trips often without them missing too much time in the classroom. Finding that perfect balance of school and family travel takes time, but you will get there!
As the quote by Mark Twain goes, “Travel is the enemy of ignorance.” and there is no better way to learn.
~Kate
Check out some of our other posts that talk about traveling with kids and getting ready for those exciting family vacations!
