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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#109: Traveling the World: The New Wave of Homeschooling
Ever wondered how to blend the joys of travel with education? Chad and Brittany, the Traveling Slaters, have taken an inspiring leap by transforming their family’s homeschooling experience into a global adventure. Join us as we explore their journey, from their decision to sell everything for world schooling, to the unique educational opportunities their children gain while visiting countries like Greece and Montenegro.
In this episode, Chad and Brittany recount their transition from traditional homeschooling to world schooling through the Boundless Life program. They share how this experience has provided their children with not only academic knowledge but also invaluable life experiences. From visiting historical sites in Sarajevo to partaking in local customs, their children are learning outside the confines of a classroom, enriching their education in culturally immersive ways.
Listen as they describe the challenges of leaving their home behind and making sense of the emotional landscape that accompanies such changes. Their adventure is about more than education; it’s about forming bonds, creating lasting memories, and raising globally minded individuals.
Tune in to hear about the unique experiences their children encounter, the friendships they've built, and how they continue to navigate their parenting and educational priorities on the road. If you're captivated by the idea of unconventional learning, you’ll want to hear all the details shared in this enlightening discussion. Don’t forget to connect with the Traveling Slaters on social media and follow their ongoing journey!
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region, and should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome to the Homeschool How-To Today. With me. I have Chad and Brittany, the Traveling Slaters, welcome.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love you, kayla. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, let's start out I usually start out anyways by how many kids you have and what ages they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have two kids Addison is eight and Levi is five and we've been. We started homeschooling Addie in 2022. And then this past year we decided to do something a little bit more exotic, I suppose, and we sold almost all of our possessions to travel the world with our kids and give them some world education.
Speaker 1:Wow, so okay. So let's back up. What made you initially even want to homeschool the kids?
Speaker 2:A lot of factors, I would. One of the main things is we didn't want our, we didn't want the government to teach our kids.
Speaker 1:Have a say.
Speaker 2:Pretty much. That's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we, honestly, we wanted to spend as much time with them as we possibly could. We didn't want to turn them over to somebody else for so many hours a day and then only see them, you know, miss the good part of them and see the bedtime meltdown.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's huge. Now, had you seen things like while your kids were in traditional school anyway, that kind of led you to think maybe maybe a different school or maybe homeschooling is the better way. Like what was that push over the edge to start homeschooling?
Speaker 3:Well, they never actually went to school. We started homeschooling at kindergarten. New York didn't need you don't need to technically go to kindergarten, but we started homeschooling Addie at kindergarten. New York didn't need you don't need to technically go to kindergarten, but we started homeschooling her in kindergarten and stuff. But I would say a lot of 2020 kind of, was that final push, because she was right on the edge of that fall going to school.
Speaker 3:We decided to hold her back until she was a little older. So she was almost six when she started kindergarten, but they were still requiring masks and things like that, and that's not something that we wanted. Also, a lot of the you know, I don't know I would say like the vaccinations and stuff that's now required for students and stuff, that was something that I didn't want, or both of us didn't want that Right, you know, those were two things that were kind of at the forefront of do we wait, do we send her, do we homeschool? I mean, there was a lot of other decisions and stuff like that, but those were some two of the bigger ones for us at that age.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we must have kids around the same. My son is six now. You said you were from New York. My son is six now you said you were from New York.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, absolutely Okay, that's where I live, the wonderful state of New York. Yeah, the and that's kind of what pushed me to my son was, well, he was in daycare and they wanted to start masking three year olds Cuomo in New York. And that wasn't going on anywhere else, I mean maybe some places, but it wasn't. It was crazy. And you know, I said and this was, you know, a year or two into COVID.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I said to the daycare provider well, all right, have you even gotten sick yet from these kids? Cause it's been a while. If you haven't yet, or show me the amount of daycare providers that did get sick and die because these kids weren't masked and they don't have the numbers for that. There weren't any. So, yeah, that's what led me to think, no, we're not doing this. We pulled him out and then it was like, oh, we better start thinking about homeschooling, because if I don't have the say over what goes over my kid's face in a private daycare it wasn't even in like a, he was at a private home, but they did follow all of the legalities of it. Follow all of the legalities of it, you know they got audited by the state and whatnot.
Speaker 1:So they followed all of that and I said if, at three years old, I don't have this kind of control over my kid, I don't know what's going to come down the pipeline, and then you just look at now what school nurses are giving out to kids.
Speaker 3:It is crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm sure we only know the half of it.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, exactly, so okay the half of it. Oh yeah, exactly so okay, so you were homeschooling them, and you did that at home for the first year two years, two years and then he was actually the homeschool teacher. Plus, my mom was amazing and took Addison one day a week or two, sometimes two days a week to help out with like reading and stuff like that which was, which was incredible and very helpful, but yeah, but he was the teacher, I had to go into the office every day, which was hard.
Speaker 1:There's a few homeschooling dads in the groups that we run in. So, yeah, I give you props. I've had a couple of them on the podcast too, actually, which makes it a lot of fun. But what made you decide let's take this on the road? And how did you do that? Well, we'll get into that how you did that with your career, since you were in the office. What made you decide like, let's break out of these four walls, even from our home, and take it on the road?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we, we've always loved to travel, even before we had kids, and we were actually at a homeschool event and we heard a child talking to someone about this, this world schooling program. And then we're like, what, what does it? What do you mean? A world schooling program, what is that? So we started to look into it, um, and then it just started looking better and better and it's like, well, you know, we can, let's, let's give this a try. We're we're kind of like stuck here. We love the state of New York, but we don't love the state of new york.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you understand what I mean there, I totally understand and I wouldn't mind getting out of here right now especially in february, where it's like ice, just sheets of ice everywhere yes, it wasn't an easy decision.
Speaker 3:I mean, both of our families are new york and so it's definitely wasn't easy. I'm one of six kids, so, and most all of my brothers and sisters are right in the same area where we, where we left, you know. So all the cousins and other kids, cousins and stuff like that are there. So it definitely was not a light decision. It was definitely a. Are we doing?
Speaker 1:this Are we going to try it? Were you thinking like we're? We're really selling everything, or we're just going to go for a couple of months and Airbnb the house?
Speaker 2:We thought about that. It just financially it was it made the most sense to just get out from underneath everything and then just kind of start from scratch when we come back. If we decide to come back to New York, we're still we're still up in the air on where we're going to, where we're going to land after you know we'll get. We're still up in the air on where we're going to land after we get done with the program.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the program there's an actual program that exists that says hey, homeschooling families join us, are you?
Speaker 3:traveling with them, or are they just giving you ideas of where to go and where to stay? So the program is called Boundless Life and they have locations called Boundless Life and they have locations. They have locations in Portugal, italy, greece, montenegro, bali. They're opening up a location in Uruguay in the fall and they also have one in Spain. So we actually, in September, we were living on the island of Syros, greece, with this program for three months. Then they have three-month cohorts, as they call them, and then in the summer, in July and August, they have one-month ones that people do at the same locations, but they have the three-month ones during the actual school year, september to June, at all these locations.
Speaker 3:So the kids actually go into a school, but it's based off of the Finnish school system and Montessori-style schooling and the classes are a lot smaller, and so, example, in the fall we had, there were 24 other families in this program with us. So we also gained an incredible community. So we now have, you know, people that we know from all around. There were people there from New Zealand, australia, argentina, canada, america. You know, it was all over. And so now we actually in between after in November we left, we went to Cyprus for the month of December and now we are actually in the Montenegro Couture Montenegro location for January, february and March right now. So the kids are back in the school system and actually there's a couple of families that we were with in Cirrus that are here as well, that the kids are really and we're also as well as the adults are super close with.
Speaker 1:So that's so cool, all right, so I have a plethora of questions. So well, first of all, when you told me, when we were setting this up and you were like, we were in Montenegro and I went to public school, so I had to look that up. I've never heard of it before.
Speaker 3:I challenged my husband to find it on the globe.
Speaker 1:None of us. Neither of us. I don't know if it was on the globe, we couldn't find it, but I Googled it. So you're near Greece, serbia, that sort of area, croatia.
Speaker 3:So Serbia, that sort of area, croatia, so it borders Bosnia. Croatia and Albania are the two like, are the three that are kind of surrounding it? What language do they speak? Montenegrin, and then also Serbian as well. Croatian kind of.
Speaker 1:So do you have to know the language, or is that part of your schooling is learning the native language?
Speaker 3:So the kids will start learning some basic words. You know they learn to count to 10 in Montenegro and they'll you know good morning, dobro jutro, is good morning here. So they'll learn like the basic stuff, but most people will. When you go into shops or restaurants, most everyone will speak English. So I'm not so clear, but most it's you can communicate.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. Oh, that's cool, all right, so they're in a school, but you have people, you have kids in this school that are from all over the world. So what language are they teaching the school in? English, okay.
Speaker 3:And then actually of us to just assume. Oh, they are going to start incorporating a little more Spanish into the program, I think, starting in the fall to um, just because they have um. They're going to have three Spanish locations here soon, so they're going to start incorporating a little more Spanish in them, but everything else is English. Basically, the program is English.
Speaker 1:So so you joined the program and they do you pick where you go for the three months or the one month you pick. Okay, and you're going to like their spots, like we have a school here and housing and you're just signing out of that. Now, what do you guys do all day? The kids are in school. What are you doing? Kicking your feet up?
Speaker 2:We explore the country, we work. Brittany has a remote job. I have a small company that I run, so we are constantly doing that kind of stuff, and there's also as part of this community, there's several things for the parents to do, such as organized hikes, yoga, lunches, all sorts of things that you can sign up for to do as kind of like extracurricular activities for for parents. This is a, this is a wellness-based cohort, this so there's some folks here that are big into the wellness space, and every morning there's meditation, there's a workout one or two days a week, there's yoga one day a week that they facilitate. Here you can. You can go if you want to read, and if you don't, you don't have to. So there's it's, and then we just hang out with the other parents a lot of the times if we're not working and parents have all different kinds of jobs.
Speaker 3:there are people that are in I'm a virtual assistant, so I have a couple clients and things like that and you know there are other people that have full time nine to five jobs that were in the hub and some hours that are crazy. We had they have a co working hub for the parents and it's open 24 seven. You can go down. It has cubicles, like for more privacy and then a more open workspace for the parents. You know there's parents that own their own businesses. There's parents that do commercial and residential real estate investing. There's, you know, there were people that were lawyers. There were all different business coaching. You know every parent has a different career, so that's cool.
Speaker 1:Now how will your children like graduate? Are they graduating from just homeschool, where you guys do have to report, like still to New York? I know we have pretty strict reporting requirements in New York. Is that how you're managing that?
Speaker 3:Yes, so the teachers will actually each after each cohort or the quarterly reports that we need to do. We have someone that we need to submit them to and the teachers help write it because they're the ones that are doing the teaching and stuff like that. So, but yep, still same. Whatever the new york requires, we're still completing that and stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, our lovely quarterly reports and I am at the beginning of the year statement of intent and attendance. All right, right, so that's really cool. So are they learning everything in school? Like, do you guys add on any? Is it Monday through Friday, nine to three, or what does it look like for the kids?
Speaker 2:So it is actually drop off is at 845 and pickup is at 330. So it's a pretty robust, robust school day and they are learning pretty much every subject, every cohort. There is also a they call it a quest, and that's basically the meat of the curriculum for that cohort.
Speaker 3:So when we were in Greece it was Biodiversity, like ocean pollution, and you know just everything dealing with the water and the animals in the water and stuff and so, um, they do math and english, have their quest, they have the quest, they have the, they have recess, they have pretty much everything.
Speaker 2:Art science, yep, different, not every single day, but they do them in different. And then there's different, um, age groups. So there's like a one to three, an eight to nine, and then like a ten to twelve, I think. Once you get, uh, twelve, I think once you become a teenager, you age out of the program. They don't have a. I think it stops at twelve no, I'm 14, it's a 14.
Speaker 1:Oh, excuse me, the pathfinders, or the trailblazers, are 14, 13, 14 year old okay, so they, when I had posted this earlier today, when I was hoping to get our instagram live going, we're on youtube but, um, someone had mentioned, oh well, I could never home or world school because the kids are not forming relationship like friendships and that sort of thing. You might have seen the comment. Um, what do you have to say about that? Obviously, people make comments about things that they really haven't looked into and and this is the first time I've even heard about having a formal program to be a part of so they're obviously with the same kids every day, forming these friendships, correct, yeah, what else do you have to say?
Speaker 2:you know, kind of about the socialization aspect there, our kids are forging friendships that are going to last a lifetime. They have the friends they made in Greece, and the friends they made here in Montenegro. So far have just have been like amazing. This is in here in Montenegro. This is a very unique situation where pretty much everything is in the same building. Unique situation where pretty much everything is in the same building. So there's six families living in this building and then the school is down below us and the work hub is down below us as well. So basically, school drop off is just walk down the stairs and you're at school. So it's almost like college dorm education kind of experience with kids.
Speaker 3:It's this education in Latin Negro.
Speaker 2:So from the moment they wake up they're like running out the door to go see who's outside in the hallway running around playing, and then as soon as they come home from school, they come up the stairs, they take their stuff, they chuck it in the doorway and then they're gone or they're here with the other kids. So it's a very much a very tight knit community.
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Speaker 1:I especially love learning about government, because I never learned this stuff in school how the government is supposed to work versus how it actually works and it's so cool that I get to have these conversations with my son about it and he gets it. They've got books for toddlers, a fantastic series for ages five through 11, and so much more. They even have a Tuttle Twins Academy. I can't wait to get started on that, because they have classes for business and entrepreneurship. You can get 40% off select items using code Cheryl40. That's C-H-E-R-Y-L-4-0. Just grab the link in the show's description and start learning together as a family. Trust me, you'll love what you're going to learn, because they never taught this to you in school.
Speaker 2:Especially in this location, and the kids are just thriving playing with kids that are five-year-olds. One of his best friends is a 10-year-old boy, so they're forming those relationships. That's one of the things for homeschool is co-ops with all the range of the kids. That helps kids progress instead of being around just their age group all day long.
Speaker 1:Sure yeah, which you never think about again because it's just you do what everybody expects you to do and send your kid to kindergarten and you don't really think about it. But yes, when you read books like I think it was Free to Learn where they really talk about the beauty of the younger kids learning from the older kids and and it's not in this authoritative way where it would be, you know mom or dad showing you how to do something, it's someone they're like, really you know think is cool and they want to be like, and then the older kids take on this responsibility of, oh, I get to show the younger kids how to do something. Does it always work out like that? No, but generally that's what I've seen and it is hard.
Speaker 1:My kids, the youngest boy out of like kind of one group that we hang out with and you know I'm constantly having to kind of like talk them through things and yeah, you know you're being the youngest is hard, but also when you're six and some of the other ones gap but I see the beauty in it and overall it's a fantastic experience where he wouldn't be getting otherwise, you know he'd just be around other crazy six-year-olds like himself not learning like, like, oh, that's how you fish.
Speaker 1:Huh, well, let me try. Could you show me that sort of thing? So that's really cool, all right. So does this program cost anything? Like if I just want to sell my house tomorrow and join this program, do do I have to pay the program or pay for the room and board? Like, what do you guys eat? How does that all work?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's a tuition cost, there's a housing cost and then there's a cost for the hub and then if you want to do any of the extracurriculars, they cost as well. So honestly, up front, it's not the cheapest option there. So honestly, up front, it's not the cheapest option.
Speaker 3:There are more expensive options. There are definitely cheaper options there's you actually research into it. There are quite a few world schooling programs out there. There's a lot of people Also one of our friends from Cirrus they're actually in an international. They put their kids in an internet trying an international school in Spain for the next however many months. There's so many different options that you people don't realize, like we didn't even realize until we started you know, really researching it and looking into it and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So there's definitely cheaper options, but there's also definitely more expensive options as well.
Speaker 1:So okay, so what? So I've had a world schooler on before, jen, and you know they kind of picked where they were going to go. They've they just went as a family. They were on some sort of raft in the Amazon for like six or nine months out there, and so you know she said like I think they Airbnb their house and they pick just cheap tickets. This is where there was a cheap ticket to, because there was a war going on in the area that they flew into.
Speaker 1:However, when you went to the outskirts, you know, when you're in the Amazon, they're pretty safe out there it's more like scorpions, I would imagine alligators, but but. And then I had a road school around to which she was from Canada and she was road schooling in the US. So I guess to her that is world schooling, where she was in an RV. But yeah, this is a different approach. What made you take this approach versus doing it on your own?
Speaker 2:We were just kind of stagnant in in life and what we were doing. It was kind of becoming mundane. It was becoming the same thing over and over again. Yeah, we, we love to travel and we wanted to kind of instill that in our kids. I saw a quote that. It was something along the lines if you, you know, teach your kids to travel, they'll never have enough money to do drugs. That's why we do it. Yeah, well, we just wanted to do something different that was a little more off the cuff. I mean, we got a lot of pushback when we decided to homeschool so that, you know, maybe that wasn't enough for us to get out to do.
Speaker 1:So what was the pushback when you told your family we're selling the house and leaving?
Speaker 3:We're not even just putting it up for rent, we are selling it and going. Those were fun conversations.
Speaker 1:What part of New York were you from? Upstate Rochester area? Okay, yeah, I'm like Albany area.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I'm from Cobuskill. My folks live in that general area.
Speaker 1:No way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're from, we do the, you know the thruway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Quite a bit, quite a bit.
Speaker 1:I'm more closer to Vermont now but I grew up in Schenectady and I've been to Cobleskill many times because of just people that went to SUNY Cobleskill or friends that are from there. I'm 40. How old are you guys? No, I'm 41.
Speaker 3:I just turned 40 in December.
Speaker 1:Really Okay. Yeah, I had my friend Liza Geez. I don't remember her last name. Oh Ham, the Hams are out there and Gottliebs It'd be so funny if you oh, I think I know some Gottliebs yeah. Huh, you do know them.
Speaker 2:I think I might know some Gottliebs. That's funny.
Speaker 1:That's so funny Small world, and yet here, you are in Montenegro right now 2.30 in the morning talking to me. All right, so are you going to stick with the program or like? What are your next steps?
Speaker 2:Great question. We're currently debating that. I'm trying to figure out what our next move is going to be, because we're halfway through this three-month cohort right now. So it's the end of March is when this one will be over.
Speaker 1:So then what?
Speaker 2:Are you like homeless after that? Well, we are technically homeless, which is which is wild. But we may try to do another cohort somewhere else. To finish out the year, maybe just do kind of a gap year kind of thing with this program and then go back to New York and the nice part of New York in this in the summertime.
Speaker 3:Visit family and stuff the kids are. You know that there isn't. There's hard parts and there's easy parts of this. You know we all miss the family. The kids miss, you know, their cousins and their friends and stuff like that. And also we all have our moments. There's ups and downs of of doing this. Um, you know, we had, um, you know, an acre and a half of land where we were, so we were constantly outside playing and just exploring and stuff like that. So it's, we miss, uh, we do miss, our home back that we sold, but um, you know it's. Then we have days where we just are walking down the street here or in old town and are talking about history with the kids. And it was carnival this this past weekend here in Couture and there's a parade and the kids had a blast and it's. You know it has the ups and downs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't go to any parades in Albany. Probably at the moment Cold of skill. You might get a few like cow parades going down, which are probably fun too. But yeah, you know you'll never regret doing this experience.
Speaker 2:You know you can always buy another house and, yeah, that was. That was kind of a big part of the process and my dad was very supportive. He said some people live a boring life. Your life will not be boring. So that was like awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know my um, a girlfriend of mine in our homeschooling clique here. She just wrote a book and she asked me to read it, mary she's, she was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago actually, and she was a teacher who left and uh, she kind of wrote this book. At first she titled it taking back my life and I said, mary, you know people are going to look at this and think you were in an abusive relationship or something you should think. You know you want people to know that this is about you kind of separating from society. And as I'm reading her book I was started to think, geez, it is a book about leaving an abusive relationship, it's about leaving the society.
Speaker 1:It's abusive to tell you this is where you have to be every day. I mean not even just as an adult going to school, but our little ones, from the time we send them to daycare and they want that to be at six weeks or eight weeks. Send them off to daycare and get back to work. Mom, you know their day is structured every day. It's breakfast and playtime and outside time and lunchtime and da, da, da, and then it goes right into school.
Speaker 1:Younger and younger too, you know now we have them in school in New York, or your universal preschool is age four, so that's a full day All the way up to 18 and then college, and like your whole day is structured for you, even telling you down to what you have to learn, which is, I think, one of the biggest realizations for me that, like we don't have to learn this, nobody says we have to learn this, but Cuomo, maybe in his common core. But that is such a made up thing and so, yeah, reading her book, I was really like, well, this is true, I think I've been going through the breakup for like five years now, which I'm still not fully there.
Speaker 1:You know, I love to be able to grow all my own food and not have to live on the grid or whatever and I know people that do. But you know, the time might come where we'll have to learn that. I don't know. But I think it's so important to teach our kids nonetheless how to do that, cause we don't know what the future will bring. Uh, but yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:It's like anything you can do these days to break from the norm of that monotony. It's just you look at it like why am I here If all I do every day is get up and go where someone else told me to go? And I worked for the government for 16 years, so it was just sit here while someone else raises your kid and you're pushing an email here and there. And if I had a better way to think of doing something, they were like yeah, that's cute, just do what we told you. You know, nobody wanted to hear good ideas or make changes. And yeah, you really get depressed because it's it's just groundhog day over and over. And so I commend you for taking that leap. I mean, it's amazing and I think more people, if it felt within our grasp, we would do it. But society just makes you feel so pigeonholed and I think it really starts out from like everybody's got to go to college, because it's like, okay, now you have all this debt.
Speaker 2:So now you gotta work, yeah they.
Speaker 3:So now you got to work. Yeah, they raise teachers. School school teaches to be workers, not entrepreneurs Not saying that no one from public schools or whatever school system you're in, you're not an entrepreneur and stuff like that but they're training you. You sit at a desk eight hours a day, go to school, you eat lunch in a cafeteria or this at a certain time, and that's literally what you do in an office.
Speaker 1:They're training you for that office life and before it was the industrial revolution. Let's train them to be this way. Yes, I've done a lot of research on the history of our education system and it's mind blowing because everything is tied up in a pretty bow for equality and you know, little Johnny in New York should know the same thing as you know little Billy in Wyoming. But there's so many different things to do. Even today I was my son's really obsessed with that really old video game, oregon Trail, mostly because it's like one of the only ones we'll let him play and he's trying to learn how to read. So we're kind of trying to use it as a way to get him to read.
Speaker 1:But I put into chat GPT today I probably shouldn't say this because I should like sell this as a product, but I put into chat GPT. Can you give me like a 10 day unit study? You know, include reading, writing, math, geography, history on the Oregon Trail, on, you know, the westward expansion. So I can just bring it to his level, something that he's curious about now and grab hold of it and then he can learn the other subjects within that. You can learn math, yeah, and relate it to the Oregon Trail. How far did they go? Let's look at the map and see. It's just. There's so many more beautiful ways to learn. And you guys, you said it's off of the Finnish model that you do, and the Montessori, and I know now in Finland they don't even do any formal education till like age seven or 10, right?
Speaker 3:Correct. I think it's seven is when for for that.
Speaker 1:So they're not teaching letters or reading before that.
Speaker 3:So they use here. They use what's called Jolly Phonics. It's a really incredible program and they teach the phonics of letters before they teach what the actual letter is. So when a kid sees the letter B he may not know that it's the letter B, but they know the sound, which has helped. Our son didn't really know his letters, you know. He knew some here and there before we went to Cirrus and the amount that he had learned in that three months with this one program that they use, jolly Phonics, was we were absolutely blown away.
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Speaker 3:Like, so they. They definitely have the different methods. It's not. You need to learn your ABCs, you need to learn this. You need to learn this. You got to learn your sight words at this age.
Speaker 1:You got to do this Like it's they work with, where the kid is, where your child is at and go from there. Well, and if 24 families are in the program, how many are actually like the ratio of student to teacher where your kids go to school?
Speaker 3:So zero is because it was a bigger one, levi's class, our youngest. He was in a class of six with a teacher and an aide, so he had a lot, of, a lot of one on one stuff with in math and in phonics. Addison was in a class that had six kids as well that had a teacher and an aide that's awesome yeah, the class is here levi has.
Speaker 3:It's just two kids here because it's a smaller cohort. There's only eight families here for this one, but addison's in a class of it. Worked out, it's all girls that are seven to eight years old and there are four of them in there, so it's one teacher plus. There's an aide that goes around to the older kids class 10 to 12 year old class and then it'll go into addison's class.
Speaker 1:So there's four boys in the older class and four girls in the in the younger, eight year old class so they can really get that one-on-one yeah extra help when needed or can move them along if needed so they don't get bored. That's really cool, and what are some of the coolest things that you guys have done since you started world schooling?
Speaker 2:Geez, we went ziplining.
Speaker 1:You can zipline and cobble skill.
Speaker 3:No, we actually last week was our mid-cohort break for the week, and another family and us we actually went to Bosnia and explored Bosnia for the week, and another family and us we actually went to Bosnia for an explored Bosnia for the week. We did a couple nights in Mostar and a couple nights in Sarajevo, and then a couple nights in a city, dermator, in the mountains here in Montenegro. It was the. Bosnia is about two hour drive, hour and a half drive from from here for us. So we actually did that and it was. We were still teaching the kids when we were traveling to.
Speaker 2:Bosnia. So Sarajevo has a lot of history um with the war back in the 90s we went to. We took them to the Latin Bridge, which is where, uh, franz Ferdinand was assassinated to kick off World War One, and we actually were standing right there at the spot. I mean, they have a little museum there. So we went in the meeting, took the kids in the museum.
Speaker 3:They asked to go in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the kids wanted to do it, let's go in here, so let's go. So when the kids want to go in the museum, you say, yes, you just go.
Speaker 3:Mm, hmm.
Speaker 2:You always say yes, and so they got to get a little bit of World War I history and that was awesome. I mean, that was just very surreal to stand there and think this.
Speaker 2:That was and we've, in Greece. We island hopped a couple of the week. We had some long weekends and we were able to get on ferries and go to Santorini and Paros those are some bucket list items for us and get to go and take the kids and see different things. We've been on crazy hikes with parents. We've taken the kids on hikes with us on the weekends, just getting outside, getting quality family time, exploring, exploring new countries. This place, this Gator, is like a fairy tale. Here there's what they call the old town and it's just this old city that just has walls built around it like a fortress and surrounded by water, and it's just stunning.
Speaker 1:That's Montenegro, or a place in Montenegro.
Speaker 2:Mountains Everywhere you look there's a giant mountain. It's wild. So we're not lacking for things to do and it's always. You know, when you go to a new place it's always exciting because it's new, and then you kind of see what you can see in three months, and then you move on.
Speaker 3:But we're really able to kind of immerse into the cultures, though here as well, we're not here just for 10 days and then we have to go back because we have to get back to work. We're actually able to, you know, become friends with. You know locals. You know the gentleman at the fruit stand in Syros. We'd walk by, we'd say hello, we'd say hello to the kids, like you know, the kids would say Kalimera, good morning is Kalimera in Greek and good morning in Greek. And it was really cool to see you know the relationships that they have built with locals as well.
Speaker 1:What do the locals think of Americans?
Speaker 2:It depends. The kids go every other Friday with this program. They have a field trip, so they're always out and about in the community. It's funny, they're always wearing their little vests so they don't get lost, which is nice. But they do tours of everything and they see a lot of the stuff that the parents see, just at different times, and it's brought down to their level so they can learn what it's about. And most of the locals, once they realize that you're kind of like a local, they kind of open up to you and they're nice to you.
Speaker 2:And you know, like Brittany was saying, we form relationships with some of the vendors, like the butcher lady here. She's, she's great, it's hilarious and it's just there's so many options to. There's workers that work with the parents to to facilitate community activities. So that's their job in life is to you know a community advisor and they set up all these things for us to do and we can do them if we want to. And then it's you just talk to them and say, hey, I need this and this and this, and they're like, okay, we'll go here, we can get you a doctor's appointment or a dentist appointment. You go here.
Speaker 3:We have a dentist appointment today. Today in a couple hours because it's 2 30 am. There are you guys. We found out she needed glasses and we got, went to a doctor in greece and got glasses, and we cheaper than in the states well.
Speaker 1:So that yeah, that brings up another good point they don't take like mv, right? So are you guys just paying out of pocket for things like doctors and dentists yeah, we just pay out of pocket.
Speaker 2:The three months is set up so you don't have to like get a visa or passport or anything like that. So we're in the we're out of. In Europe there's a Schengen union, which is basically a union inside of the European Union, and for those countries you can only be in those countries for 90 days out of 180 day period. So Greece is one of those countries.
Speaker 1:Imagine that, having rules around, your border. Immigrants and people emigrating to your country.
Speaker 1:Bizarre immigrants, and, yes, people immigrating to your, to your country, bizarre, so so montenegro is strategically placed with this program because they are not a shengen country so we go to greece and to montenegro and not have to worry about a visa or passport yeah, I had a friend that just went to mexico to get all this dental work done and and she's from Poland but lives here now and she couldn't believe the prices in America, what things cost. So yeah, it was cheaper for her to fly from New York to Mexico, have an Airbnb there the whole time.
Speaker 3:People don't realize that Mexico has very good health care. People go down there, especially families to give birth, because their system is. And it was amazing, wow, the eye doctor for Addison it was. We got in. What the next day after? We said we needed an appointment and it was 40 bucks, 40 euros to get an eye exam done for Addison. We got a copay. That's just what it costs.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's something All right as we round out the hour. What else did you guys want to make sure that we talked about? I know you guys have a page for people to follow you kind of journey. You know what you guys, or journal what you guys are doing along your journey there, which, yeah, I shared one today. I couldn't get it to work just the way I wanted to, so I kind of like pirated it. Screenshot it but, I, collaborated with you on it.
Speaker 2:Loved it. That's fine. Just, I don't know. Maybe just do what feels right. Do what feels right for your family and follow your dreams. It's not easy, it's not always sun shining rainbows. It takes work and you do miss out on some things. But if you know, if you want to travel, travel. If you want to stay home, stay home. If you want to do your thing, do your thing.
Speaker 1:Someone's always going to have a comment, but you got to do what's best for you and your family. Yeah, brittany, did you have to leave the job that you? Had to do this and get a new job.
Speaker 3:I was there. It was a wonderful company that I worked for for almost eight years, but it just wasn't a position. I was an executive assistant and it just wasn't one that I could go remote with. They needed someone that could come into the office a couple of days a week, so I did have to leave position, which being the only income at the time. Like it was, it was not an easy choice. There were a lot of late night conversations of do we do this? Do we not Do we? What if we try this? What if we don't do this? What if we do this option instead of this option? Like there was? It was months of discussion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't a one day thing to make this decision and it came down to. You know, when we look back at our life, are we going to regret not doing it, and kind of so we did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly how I went about leaving government work. It was like, oh, am I really going to leave a pension?
Speaker 1:You know they tell you for so long. Oh, nobody has pensions anymore, you can't leave a pension, you just can't leave a pension. And finally I had to look at it and say, well, by the time I get my pension, my kids aren't going to need me anymore. So, on my deathbed, where am I going to be? And at the time too, I had a friend whose mother just retired from the state because she got cancer and she died a couple of years later. So, having cancer, the whole retirement.
Speaker 1:So, even that is not guaranteed. What we have now is our kids are young, we're healthy. So if you can make something else work and and even with the podcast, I get, you know, tied up and you know spending extra time on this and extra time on that and trying to grow the Instagram page, and that's like I have to take a step back and say why we're doing with less for a reason, but then, at the same time, it is it's not an easy road by any means.
Speaker 3:We've sacrificed a lot, Even before we decided to sell everything when it was just one income.
Speaker 2:It was homeschool.
Speaker 3:We wanted to homeschool the kids and it was not easy by any means. There were very hard days where he's like we got to send her to school. I can't do this. It's been a week.
Speaker 2:We've all been there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot, and so it's not easy, but in our hearts it's been a week. We've all been there. Yeah, a lot, and so it's not easy, but in our hearts it's been worth it and for our kids it's been worth it.
Speaker 1:The overall is definitely worth it. Well, chad and Brittany, thank you so much for coming on today at 2.30 in the morning, your time in Montenegro, people can follow you. Why don't you let them know where they can follow you, and I will also put that in the show's description yeah, uh, we're on pretty much all social media channels at the traveling slaters awesome.
Speaker 2:We do most most of our stuff's on instagram. That's our, that's our favorite platform.
Speaker 1:It looks pretty life's not always that way though and the live streams work out. Yeah, oh, oh guys, thank you so much. Yes, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Thank you and if anyone has any questions, they can reach out to you and you can reach out to us or connect us or reach out to us with any questions.
Speaker 1:I have one comment here from Keith that said I love the Traveling Slater videos.
Speaker 2:No questions, but a nice comment. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that very much.
Speaker 2:We'll keep up your good work and spread the spread the word that we can take that leap. Leave the groundhog day. Love your podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks guys thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the homeschool how-to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.