Where Will You Go? Choosing Destinations for Worldschooling

How do you choose where to go when the possibilities seem almost endless? This blog post will give you a few ideas to get you thinking about choosing your worldschooling destinations and creating the kind of Wonder Year journey you’d like to take.

VISIT WISH-LIST DESTINATIONS

What have you always wanted to see and experience? Do you have inspirational travel photos posted on your computer or fridge? Are there places that are just calling your name? Spin the globe. Choosing your worldschooling destinations is a great time to involve the whole family. Being curious about a place will make your kids all the more engaged once you’re there.

What does your family like to do together? Kayaking? Exploring the mountains?

CHOOSE PLACES TO PRACTICE MULTILINGUALISM

You might plan some or all of your itinerary in order to learn a new language or reinforce a second or third one. Are your kids taking language classes at school and you’d love for them to converse with native speakers? Adults, too, may see great value in language immersion.

BUILD AROUND YOUR FAMILY’S FAVORITE ACTIVITIES

Think about how you like spending time as a family. Do you prefer being outdoors? Camping, biking, or trekking can drive an itinerary. Are you drawn to water? You might build your trip around kayaking, surfing, or diving hot spots. Maybe you are more of a big-city crew, with a love of museums and restaurants. Building in some of your family’s favorite activities can help keep everyone engaged.

How do you want to travel? Fast or slow?

CONSIDER NATURAL SEASONS AND CULTURAL EVENTS

Research the best time of year to visit your high-priority destinations. Some places will work any time of the year; others might have peak times for desirable weather conditions or seasonal flora or fauna: wet or dry salt flats in Bolivia, butterflies returning to San Juan Capistrano, monsoon seasons in Southeast Asia, or the fall foliage in New England. You can choose worldschooling destination to coincide with festivals, events, or cultural celebrations you want to attend, such as the Thai New Year celebration water fights or Day of the Dead happenings in Oaxaca. Prioritize key events and anchor your trip around their locations.

CHOOSE SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL

The choices we make about travel—destinations, transportation, accommodations, and even souvenirs—have an impact on the local environment and people. Asking questions and being aware of how our presence in a place affects the local community is a responsibility we can all embrace. And it’s not just about doing the right thing; many travelers note that their most memorable experiences had a strong local flavor. What a great way to embed critical thinking into your journey: choose worldschooling destinations that have positive impact.

TRAVEL TO FIND COMMUNITY

More Wonder Year families are arranging their itineraries so they can connect with other traveling families at schools, summits, hubs, pop-ups, and informal gatherings. Sparks fly when worldschooling kids connect with each other! 

OTHER LENSES FOR CHOOSING DESTINATIONS

Here are some other ways you might create your itinerary:

• Around homestays, home swaps, or volunteerism
• Via around-the-world air travel, which often requires that you travel in only one direction: east or west
• Off-season all the way to maximize easier bookings, lower costs, and fewer crowds. One downside: you may find accommodations, sites, restaurants, and tours closed for the season, or you may encounter construction and repairs underway.
  

  Are there far flung locations that have always been on your bucket list?

• Country collecting: some travelers want to visit as many countries as possible. Just make sure you keep it meaningful by taking time to really appreciate the local people, places, and culture.
• By theme: you may wish to choose a worldschooling theme, such as historical events or interesting flora and fauna, as you go. 
• Educational programs: alternative schools, experiential programs, and immersive experiences geared toward worldschoolers are rapidly proliferating, offering families the opportunity to enroll their children and build itineraries around their attendance.
• Personal history or connection: some families like to visit their ancestral homes or retrace their forebears’ migration paths.
• Friends and family: extended travel can offer the chance to visit those you might not often see, or to stay with them for longer periods of time than is usually possible. This can also provide a nice break from being alone on the road, give the kids friends or cousins to play with, and save some money, too.
• Convenience: sometimes you just have to choose what is easy and makes sense—a good stop between two of your favored destinations, or somewhere inexpensive to spend a few nights. If you have the right attitude, you can almost always turn these sojourns into wonderful opportunities.

ADDITIONAL ITINERARY CONSIDERATIONS

Travel Advisories

Before choosing your final worldschooling destinations, check current safety conditions, travel advisories, and warnings for the places you are interested in visiting. The US Department of State website is an excellent place to start, with tour companies and travel blogs providing additional insight about real-time safety considerations.

So many magical places to visit!

Seeing the Sites

When you first commit to extended travel, six, twelve, or eighteen months might seem like a long time. Once you fill it with your planned itinerary, you might realize that there will never be enough time to see everything you want. In the places you visit, please try to let go of the notion of covering everything. No matter where you are or how long you’re there, you’ll still have to choose the things you most want to do. Savor what you are fortunate to experience, and release the rest. For those places you don’t want to miss, be aware that booking lead times for hot destinations and activities are picking up. As our society has become increasingly mobile and more travelers are hitting the road each year, some national parks, museums, tours, top-rated campgrounds, and other popular attractions are newly requiring advance bookings, and reservation lead times have gotten much longer. Nearby accommodations and transportation may also be affected, so monitor what you’ll need to book in advance versus on the ground.

Planning versus Winging It

Try to find balance between planning before you depart and figuring things out while you are on the road. A fellow traveler shared this: “When you’re planning, you don’t know everything that’s there. You only see the tourist stuff before arriving, but once you’re on the ground, you can really see all there is to experience with your family.” Leave room for some spontaneity and changes of plans, while of course keeping in mind the cost of adjusting or canceling reservations.

Scheduling Downtime

One of the most important pieces of advice we can offer is to leave downtime in your itinerary. As much as you think you want to cover a lot of ground and see as much as you can, travel fatigue is a very real thing. When you are traveling full time, occasionally it can start to feel more like work than play. In fact, sometimes you’ll need a vacation from the traveling. In addition, you’ll likely need days set aside for future travel planning, laundry, cooking at “home,” and catching up on worldschooling lessons.

If you find this helpful, stay tuned for more travel planning tips coming to our blog soon. Or, consider pre-ordering our book, Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling.