Briefly describe your family (who you are, ages, where you are from, backgrounds, profession(s), etc.)
We are a family of 5, daddy Massimiliano, 45 from Florence, Italy, physical therapist and acupuncturist. Mommy Sarah, 41, born in the US but grew up in Florence Italy, photographer. Kids: Cosimo, 10 and Emma, 9, both born in Florence Italy and little Luca, 3, born in the US. Massimiliano and I met in Italy and after having our first two kids moved to Arizona for 8 years. We then got tired of the business oriented life and decided to sell everything and explore the world.
Describe your worldschooling travel style. (how long you’ve been doing it, how it works and briefly where you’ve been)
We have been traveling around the world for 20 months. It started like a gap year and now we have no plan of stopping! We have been fast traveling because we thought we had only 12 months. We are now planning on slowing down and spending more time in the countries we visit. As of today we have been to: Bali, Belize, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Bhutan, India, the Emirates, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, France and Philippines.
Describe your worldschooling – education style.
When we started our travels we brought our kid’s school books, but that was not going to work for us. After a lot of trial and error we found www.time4learning.com as our perfect fit. So I guess we would define ourselves homeschooling worldeschoolers. However we didn’t relay completely on this program for our kids learning. We enrich our kids education with our simple everyday experiences, museums, field trips and whatever the country we are visiting has to offer. We also use a few apps, since at times we are in places with no wifi and cannot access our online program. We are not strict or have a set schedule though. Some days we do more, some days less, some days non!
Why did you choose this learning path?
Since we started our travels and this type of learning approach, we have realized that our kids have so many more questions, are more curious and reflective about everything that surrounds them. They are finally starting to have their own opinions on lots of matters, not influenced on what they are told to think. Isn’t this what learning should be all about?
What are the greatest gifts (benefits) you’ve experienced as a worldschooling family?
Freedom to be as we like. As time has gone by we have finally been able to recognize and shake off a lot of those patterns that society “imposes” on you.
What are your greatest w
Worldschooling challenges (education, travel, health, work) and how have they played a role in your worldschooling journey?
At the beginning education was one of our biggest challenges, we were trying to find our way and we did struggle in making it work while traveling full time. Once we went to our first worldschooling summit we finally overcame this. During this time we were also learning to actually know our kids. We realized that our lifestyle before wasn’t giving us enough true quality time with them.
Now after being on the road for so long and moving pretty fast around the world, we need to slow down. Since we don’t feel like tourists anymore but we consider ourselves travelers we evolved in a way of traveling and we feel the need to be part of each place for longer. So depending on where we are the challenge is at times finding a good place to slow down.
Why did you choose to worldschool?
We decided to travel the world with our kids, to see how different and how similar countries and cultures are, worldschooling is an obvious consequence once you open yourself to this type of unique experience.
Share a big powerful Worldschooling “aha” moment ( an inspiring story from the road)
There have been many, but one that I share often and it still feels very important is our time volunteering at a school in Zambia. We were there for about 2 weeks one year ago. The school welcomed all of us. We volunteered in the classrooms, shared some of our knowledge, played with the kids, helped out other teachers with their lessons and took pictures of each child which we then printed and gifted them (some never saw a picture of them before!). The school was struggling with donations and volunteers to come and spend some time there. They wanted to give the kids an opportunity to see the world through the different nationalities that came to visit. It makes us happy now to see that lots more volunteers are going there, we feel that our visit has had an impact on this evolution for school, as it has on our lives.
What would you say to other (hesitant) worldschooling families that may be considering this journey?
Don’t overthink just do it. Every family has a different style, a different routine. It will be challenging in the beginning because you have to find your groove, but it will be extremely rewarding also when difficult. When you see your children interacting with other people and telling them about their experiences with such normality and confidence, you will know it is working out great!
Sarah is a mother of 3 kids, professional photographer and world traveller. In 2018 she decided to bring on the road her photography business The Nomad Photography She and her family (The5worldexplorers) have been exploring the world for 20 months, sharing it through social media and their blog in the hopes to inspire other families to set out to see the world together!
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