My name is Amy, my husband is Mike, and our wonderful children are Lan and Kayden.
Before we had children, Mike and I traveled a lot together. We drove a camper van to Mexico (twice), Guatemala, Belize, America, and across Canada. Then we took almost 10 months for our honeymoon backpacking around South East Asia. It was on our honeymoon, with plans of little ones in the near future, that we decided we wanted to set up a lifestyle where we would travel the world with our family. For the last eight years we have been working towards the goal of picking up and leaving the familiar and comfortable life we have in Canada for a life of adventure in the wide world.
This blog is to chronicle our Worldschool Adventures, traveling for six months of every year while we unschool our two boys. We travel slowly, settling down for a few months at a time in the places we love. We have no set itinerary, just a general idea of places we want to visit and the freedom to travel at our own pace.
Amy is the writer of this blog, mother extraordinaire, and passionate traveler. She loves noodles for breakfast, make-you-think books, going against the grain, and making silly faces. She is a stay-at-home homeschooling mama who is trying to find that precarious balance of being a good mom without losing herself in the process.
Mike is the kind of guy who can always make you laugh. His witty, off-beat humor will always give your stomach muscles a work out. He is a Journeyman Carpenter by trade and loves to build things with his own two hands. He is also an amazingly talented artist and hopes this trip will give him the spare time he needs to explore his art.
Lan is an very bright and spirited boy. He loves to learn about the world, natural disasters, dinosaurs, space, and most importantly Star Wars. He likes building amazing and imaginative things out of Lego and he loves all things spooky!
Kayden loves anything to do with sports. He is the type of boy who longs to be in the great outdoors. He is also our little ‘Dennis the Mennis’ and performs crazy acts of dare devil bravery that set our hearts racing. He will climb anything and everything without fear of falling (or of mommy completely freaking out!)
17 comments
3 pings
grandma Cindy says:
August 16, 2010 at 6:30 pm (UTC -7 )
Amy, what can I say. Your words are inspiring and there is nothing more a mother and grandmother could ever want in this world than to know there is YOU, taking care of my child, Mike, and my grandchildren Lan and Kayden. You are a gift from the heavens! You are also a soul of the earth, and with your example and determination the earth can only get better. Thank you Amy for you! All our love and appreciation, Cindy
Nadine says:
October 6, 2010 at 12:28 am (UTC -7 )
Dear Amy and Mike and family and of course also dear Cindy great mother-in-law (you are such a nice mother-in-law, Amy and Mike, you are so lucky) !!!!
We received your email and read your entries on your blog and we can feel the excitement and spark that you have about this world. It’s refreshing and we wish you good luck! You are right, there are others out there like you and other families like you, so concentrate on being you, doing good, being a good example and inspiration to others and don’t worry about your brother not putting his recycling in the recycling bin. One day he will… some people just need time. We cannot force our lifestyle onto others as well as we don’t want their lifestyle. There is no right and wrong.
Anyway, we like your lifestyle very much and we are similar to you: wear lots of second hand clothes, have no tv, no car, are vegetarians, travel very slowly, try to avoid planes, even use the mooncup (during my time of the month…). We recently had a lot of thoughts about leaving, traveling, living a life on the road and the price we pay for this. I put our thoughts about it on our website if you like to read them… you are of course welcome. We believe that travelling should not be for recreation, but for doing something good in this world.
I will be happy to follow your travels and hope that our paths will cross one day. We will be leaving China in January and we’ll be off traveling again ourselves. We are not sure where yet, this can be decided last minute. Where ever life will take us…
I will also be interested to read about your unschooling. Our home-schooling is going all right, but it’s neither great, nor bad. Our boys are very average learners – just normal kids – and we had to make our home-school into a “real” school with set times, schedules, rules etc. otherwise it would have never worked for us. Our boys would have simply ended up playing all day and times tables and essays etc. simply don’t just fall into their brains whilst playing lego… I suppose all parents/children are different. I will be interested to read about your experiences in that matter.
Thank you for sharing and enjoy your travel preparations and good luck for selling the house!
Nadine and family
Jason says:
February 5, 2011 at 6:44 pm (UTC -7 )
Amy,
Just ran across your blog. Looks like a fun trip you have planned. We’ve recently returned (dad, mom, 14 yr old boy, 13 yr old girl) from a year away (6 months in S.America and 6 months in Mediterranean). I like your perspective on homeschooling/unschooling/worldschooling and your kids are going to learn tons.
I will enjoy following your family travels.
Jason
worldschooladventures says:
February 5, 2011 at 10:32 pm (UTC -7 )
Glad you found us Jason! Your trip sounds amazing! If you have any comments or perspectives on any of our posts, please feel free to leave them for us. I’m sure you would have unique insights and tips for us from your own experiences.
with2kidsintow says:
February 21, 2011 at 12:37 am (UTC -7 )
hi amy
where are you guys from in B.C.?? i’m canadian too, from the vancouver area, but have been living in AUS. nice to ‘meet’ you!
worldschooladventures says:
February 21, 2011 at 5:55 pm (UTC -7 )
Nice to meet you too! I’ve been enjoying your blog, how exciting to be finally on the road. I can’t wait till its our turn
We live in the Okanagan Valley.
Karin says:
March 19, 2011 at 6:22 pm (UTC -7 )
Dear Amy
). I am very interested in your unschooling approach. So far I tend to see it with Nadine: we had to keep our boys’ schooling fairly formalized, otherwise they would have played all day. Which also did them an enormous amount of good as well as all the other incredible experiences on the way. However, our intention was from the beginning to spend just a year abroad and then go back to Switzerland and the normal school. So it is really like Nadine says: there are as many options and possibilities as there are long-term travelling families. I will be following your adventures. Take care. Karin
Thank you for your great website and your awesome list of other travelling families – will keep me glued to the computer forever! We also spent a year travelling with our 8 year old twin boys (that’s what I call having kids as close in age as possible in order to get back to globetrotting as fast as possible
worldschooladventures says:
March 19, 2011 at 7:51 pm (UTC -7 )
Karin, thank you for your comment! I don’t think that unschooling is for everyone, there needs to be a level of comfort with it for the parents as well as a huge amount of trust. We are lucky in the fact that our children have never been in the “system” and we are really starting our unschooling journey with a fresh slate. We also don’t plan on returning them to regular school once our trip is over (at least not at this point). I have been so amazed at the learning I have witnessed in our first year that I truly believe that unschooling will be our path for the foreseeable future. I have received a lot of interest from my readers on our unschooling approach and I plan on doing more posts about it soon.
Regardless of how one chooses to school however, I think that travel is the best education a parent could ever offer their children.
Alison Ghani says:
April 30, 2011 at 1:32 am (UTC -7 )
Hi there. When do you plan to be in Kuala Lumpur?
worldschooladventures says:
April 30, 2011 at 6:28 pm (UTC -7 )
I really couldn’t tell you, we are very loose with out plans and our plan is to really not have much of a plan! I checked out your website! Fabulous! Hope we can meet up one day and share travel stories!
breakoutofbrooklyn says:
July 14, 2011 at 4:11 am (UTC -7 )
Great blog and great vision! I also plan on taking my daughter to see the world (leaving summer, 2012). I was struck by the first couple of comments attached to this post- such positivity from your family! Best wishes.
gabi klaf says:
October 20, 2011 at 10:46 pm (UTC -7 )
How awesome and inspirational to read about your look on life. i homeschooled our children from two and a half years; then helped found a school which was more perfect than I could have ever dreamed of, and now, we are already 8 months on the road world-schooling, with no end in sight. I love your writing style and can’t wait to be inspired by more.
maybe our kids can skype hello sometime! gabi
worldschooled says:
October 21, 2011 at 8:57 am (UTC -7 )
Thank you for your kind words Gabi! I hope one day we can meet up somewhere in the world. It is so amazing meeting other families who share our outlook on life!
Amy says:
October 23, 2011 at 9:51 pm (UTC -7 )
Hey Amy! Awesome website. I love the blog entries, especially the story of how you and Mike met and fell in love. You are doing amazing things. You are staying true to your dream and I admire that.
Hugs! Amy
Molly Surazhsky says:
January 29, 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC -7 )
Hi Amy! Your family is so beautiful!!
I will be following your blog. Can I actually add the link to your blog on mine?
The boys are great and it’s so cool that Mike is a carpenter!!! I hope that we’ll get a chance to see some of his carpentry work in the near future!
Happy Travels!
Molly
worldschooled says:
January 31, 2012 at 1:43 pm (UTC -7 )
Of course you can link Molly! Thank you
Ariel Lundin says:
May 19, 2013 at 12:08 am (UTC -7 )
There certainly is an abundance of homeschooling information available and this is a good thing… for the most part… as long as you don’t get bogged down in overload and suffer paralysis by analysis.
Quote This: Amy on Unschooling | Undogmatic Unschoolers says:
November 16, 2012 at 9:19 am (UTC -7 )
[...] someone else that comes darn close to my own definition. And this is it. Amy had a fabulous blog at Worldschool Adventures where she documents her family’s “world schooling.” Check it out… [...]
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[...] World School Adventures. Amy and her family are living my dream. They’re currently in Thailand. I try to enjoy and [...]
3 Kinds of Location Independent Businesses | Life With a Mission says:
February 27, 2013 at 4:02 am (UTC -7 )
[...] Amy, Mike and their two sons are currently slow traveling through South East Asia. I’ve read their blog for a few years and followed along through their saga of selling their home, living in an RV and finally departing for their first slow travel trip in Thailand. [...]