Worldschooling at Home
Yes, it is possible to “worldschool” without traveling abroad. Although I highly recommend traveling with your kids for the glorious lessons learned from obstacles faced, travel setbacks, and general confusion in a country outside their own, it IS possible to expand their worldview and provide rich sensory experiences from the home.
Let’s start with reading!
Carefully select books set in countries all around the world, written by artists with a different cultural background than your own and books that tell stories from other worlds.
Need some examples?
Heart of a Samurai
We Had to Be Brave
Long Walk to Water
The Secret Garden
Last of the Mohicans
For younger children, choose fairy tales and folk tales from around the world! We just spent a small fortune on nature stories and mythology from New Zealand authors and the Māori culture.
What about science?
Science in the elementary years is mostly life science, right? Think flora, fauna, biomes, astronomy, rocks, minerals, bodies of water, weather patterns and landforms. In the upper grades students explore physics, magnets, electricity and physical sciences, but mostly it’s life science.
I strongly advocate starting in your own backyard, literally and figuratively, and observing what sings, stings and grows there, but then venture out into the city’s botanical gardens, hiking trails, science center and perhaps the coastal areas. Go hiking, biking, bird watching, flower picking and visit farmers markets close to home, but then…bring in the world using National Geographic magazines or Nat Geo kids! Watch Planet Earth or nature documentaries online or choose nonfiction books at the library from countries all around the world. Have your child document their discoveries in a journal by sketching their observations and making notes from their own independent research. Science is about finding answers to questions that have yet to be answered, not about memorizing answers to questions that have already been answered! There’s no right or wrong way to observe, analyze and experiment.
Social Studies
Don’t even get me started on this subject. It really bugs me this is a subject in elementary as so much more can be learned through reading living books and getting out into the world rather than sitting in a classroom, but I digress. Reading a variety of historical fiction books to, and with, your child is the best way to bring other cultures home, but you could also visit artisan villages in your community, attend cultural shows and festivals in your corner of the world and make a point to try cuisines from places you’ve never been.
Worldschooling is about expanding your child’s worldview and exposing them to cultures outside their own. This can be achieved through art, music, dance, plays and stories from your living room! Don’t shy away from “worldschooling” just because your home or job keeps you more stationary than the strangers your live vicariously through online.
Trust me, there are moments I’m abroad where I’m homesick wishing I’d chosen to teach about a far away land from the comfort of my own home! Haha!
Journey well, sweet friends! -Chelsea