Carschooling 101: What is it and how to do it!

As homeschoolers, we can spend a lot of time in our cars. We are heading to this field trip or that practice, co-op or just the grocery store! It can be very easy to fall behind a day or two on my lesson planner when we have a really busy day. Today, in particular, we are very busy. We have a unit study on energy coming up so I elected to set up a build and race with our co-op. We also have golf lessons this morning. We will likely be on the go from 8am until about 1pm which also happens to be prime homeschool hours in our home. So how do we make the most of it you ask?

We use the car! I pile the kids into our van and I hand them the tools needed to complete their work. We may not get as much do as we would if we were at home, but building and racing a homemade race car will retain our lesson much better than a worksheet ever could.

 

So what do I use to get our car-schooling done? I have several tools in my arsenal.

This awesome Clipboard

We use this when we are going somewhere but there are worksheets that need to be completed that day. Before we hop in the car, say for a doctor’s appointment for a sibling, I will put any worksheets that need to be done in the clipboard. I usually add crayons or markers, whichever he might need to do his work, a pencil, and a small snack. Bonus, it also holds his tablet!

 

 

 

 

This tablet

This tablet has been a fantastic tool for us. It was only $39.99 when we bought it, but it is well worth the increase in price. I’ve added the kindle app, Starfall, bookmarked education.com. There are quite a few more educational apps that we have downloaded, but I won’t name them all. This tablet has a mini SD card slot, it has a good battery life (in my opinion) and for the price it has held up for over two almost three years in my home with heavy usage by me, my preschooler and my toddler may have had hold of it several times- and it still lives!

Busy bags

Whether you purchase pre-made busy bags or choose to make your own (I do both) busy bags are a great tool to have in the car. I usually make mine out of clip cards and clothes pins. I also do lace cards or lacing beads. I store mine in zip-lock bags and hand them out right after they buckle up. If I give them too soon they tend to get them out before we even leave the house.

DVDs

DVD’s are great for long car rides. I have DVD players installed in my minivan but before that, I had my kindle with movies downloaded for the kiddos. Portable DVD players are another good option, they have really come down in price. I usually pop a Veggie Tales DVD or a Leap Frog DVD in for my kids.

Best of all as my oldest progresses into older math I have used the DVD player to play the Teaching DVD that comes with Math-U-See to help him understand the lessons. We usually watch the Teaching DVD together or during car time! It has helped tremendously.