A movable feast: For some, the world is a classroom

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"Evidence suggests that home-schooling in America is a growing trend. In a weeklong web-only series, TODAYshow.com reports on the challenges and creative opportunities presented by this approach to education.

Niall Gifford, 11, attends school on a sailboat in the South Pacific. Markos McFerrin, 7, has done countless math and spelling lessons on the back of a tandem bicycle. Jen and Maddie Farmer, 12-year-old twin sisters, have completed curricula in Greece and England.

These typical American kids are having exotic educational experiences for the same reason: Their parents have chosen to home-school them so they can travel.

For such families, “travel” doesn’t mean frantic vacations to Disneyland. These moms and dads want their children to see the world, experience other cultures and learn, learn, learn.

Of course, pulling it off can entail major lifestyle upheavals. Jobs need to be left behind (or sabbaticals requested), houses need to be rented out, modes of travel need to be selected, budgets need to be carefully crafted. For many parents who home-school away from home, wrenching themselves so completely from their regular lives has not been simple.

But has it been worth it? Oh yeah.

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How to Let Homeschooled Children Study Languages?

by Audrey Morales

Foreign language learning is considered to be one of the most important and advantageous endeavors that learners of any age can invest their time, money, and effort in. For families who are homeschooling their children, they are often asked about how they put foreign languages in their children’s curriculum. At this age of advanced technology, homeschooling parents don’t need to worry since there are many available tools online which they can easily choose from.

Homeschooled children have the advantage of choosing which languages to learn and they can choose the ones which are not commonly taught in regular schools. There is a growing need of learning Oriental and critical languages, why not let your children learn those languages?

Studying foreign languages at home could be challenging: children may have a hard time in learning pronunciation and accents unless the teacher of languages is a native speaker of the languages being taught. There are available downloadable software and educational sites on the internet which provide audio tools for language learning however; there are some feedback on some tools that say that some are not spoken by native speakers of the language being learned.

The good thing with learning foreign languages at home is that children can learn them at their own pace; they can progress to another level once they have covered all aspects and finished all lessons of the language on the level that they are in. They don’t have to worry about keeping up with their peers as how it usually happens in regular classrooms.

Another option for homeschooled children to improve their foreign language skills is to study languages abroad. This may literally take children away from home but this will give them an experience they will treasure for the rest of their lives. Having the opportunity to study languages abroad will help them build confidence within themselves as they tackle tasks in language learning in a different place, a place where the language they are learning is spoken as a native tongue by the people around them.

Studying languages abroad will give young learners the chance to be immersed in the language they are learning, the culture and history of the city and country; as well as have the opportunity to meet new people both locals and foreigners who are also learning languages like them! They will be learning not only about the culture of the place but also of other nationalities.

The experience of studying language abroad will also help young students become independent; they will be living in a different place for a period of time and they will learn how to take care of themselves. Most programs offer homestay options where language learners will be living with host families while other programs offer dormitories where they will be staying with other language learners from different parts of the world.

Several researches have found that children are fast and efficient language learners and they become aware of more things and cultures if they learn foreign languages. Let your children study languages and help give them a better future and a better outlook towards the world.