ROAMSCHOOLING

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Daytrip Ideas

What IS roamschooling?

roam: c.1300, romen, from Old English ramian "act of wandering about"
school: Old English scol, from Latin schola, from Greek skhole "leisure, spare time,"

Roamschooling is the act of leaving your house to learn. Not the time spent in the car running every day errands. That's carschooling and there is a whole book out about that.

Roamschooling is going somewhere to explore, to see, to try something new. It's meeting up with friends and taking a hike, it's turning over a rock to see what lives there, it's spending an hour skipping rocks and chatting about nothing much. It's about slowing the pace of life to match the pace of nature.

I half- jokingly explain to people that we are roamschoolers, which is like homeschoolers, but we are never home.

This is not entirely accurate, as many of our adventures and explorations take place in the fields, woods and creeks that surround our house.  You don't have to get in your car to roam, you don't even have to leave your house to explore your world.   In bad weather you can use books, a birdfeeder, a miniature garden in a pot to learn and observe.  

If a child or parent is unable to hike and ramble about in the woods, bring in leaves and insects, flowers and rocks.  A bucket of gravelly sand from a local stream bank, a clump of clay or mud to feel, a worm or feathers to look at, bark rubbings and photographs. 

Everything in nature is connected and to lose that connection to the outdoors does damage, not just to those unable to be outdoors, but to those unwilling as well.  We must bring our children to the world, teach them respect for all living things and help them to understand the earth will be here after we are gone and what we do during our time upon it matters.

This site is a combination of personal thoughts, things our family does, ideas and adventures and an invitation. Join us on an outing, try one of the experiments or projects, read a snippet from my personal journal or our nature journal and put down your books and take off your shoes and go outside a while.