Traveling Down the Yellow Brick Road: Homeschooling in Strange Locations

One of the main reasons we decided to start homeschooling was because of the flexibility it allows. We were thinking we were going to be moving to Australia and while we were waiting, we were planning on traveling all over the United States. Australia hasn't happened (a full year later) and we're not sure it ever will, but we have been able to take advantage of the flexibility homeschooling offers.

Some "strange" places we've homeschooled:

in the car / truck

as we were driving across the country towing our camper from state to state (can you say captive audience)
going to and from just about anywhere we go (church, bank, store, etc)

in the camper
at the grocery store (what better way to teach about money)
on field trips (zoos, Kennedy Space Center, farms, etc)

And today we got to add the laundromat. I've had to wash a comforter for a while, and my in-laws coming to visit in a couple days was all the incentive I needed. The washer and dryer at our house is too small, so the laundromat was my only option. I've witnessed a fight at the local mall and Wal-mart, so what happens at the laundromat after dark... I don't want to know, so the kids had to go with me (Side note: Going during the day isn't all peaches and cream either. We got to watch a domestic screaming match). Anyway...

Before leaving the house I made sure to grab a few things for the kids to do (all educational in nature). We read a book on dinosaurs and a book on big cats. The biggest hit was a game my daughter received for Christmas. It's called "Pop for Numbers" (I highly recommend for people with preschoolers and children struggling with number recognition). It's designed to help with number recognition (which my daughter needs) but I was able to adjust it a bit to have it help teach my son as well (we used it to work on number places). I think he's mastered the 1000's and is on his way to mastering 10,000's. At the end of the game, each player is left with a stack of pieces that we then counted (something else my daughter needs work on and that can't hurt to review for my son).