Hello Homeschoolers, Travelers, and Friends-
If you’re reading this doc, it’s because you just might be interested in sharing a Mexico learning adventure with a group of Philly homeschoolers in October 2018. Please feel free to share this with other families who may be interested in this type of educational travel. If you are ready to register, here is the link. Otherwise, read on…
Overview
We’re planning educational workshops from Sept-Oct that will culminate in a trip to Mexico in three parts. We invite you to join us for the main part of the trip in Mexico City Oct 20-25, and then to add one or the other two trip parts if you wish.
Our overarching goal is to co-lead deep-learning, personally reflective, budget-minded cultural experiences with parents and their children. It’s worldschooling! Our maiden voyage in that regard is to facilitate educational gatherings, activities and presentations around Mexico-topics, and to organize and guide a week-long tour in Mexico City. While sharing the travel experience together, we’d like to teach families how to travel cheaply and safely, with an awareness of our privilege and our impact as guests in the culture we’re learning from. We hope to encourage and equip parents to plan their own future trips in ways that incorporate their family’s interests, budget, and educational goals.
Yes, you can do this trip even if your adult partner can’t come with you. We will help you.
Yes, you can do this trip even if you have a kid(s) in school. It’s worth it to take them out!
No, your kids are not too young or too old for this trip.
Trip Dates
- Main Trip to Mexico City, Oct 20 – Oct 25
Discover the history, art, and culture of vibrant Mexico City with your kids and our kids and other families. We’ll plan it and lead it, including pre and post trip learning.
*Fee paid to us.
- San Miguel de Allende, October 30th – Nov 2 (add-on #1)
Join a large community of traveling homeschoolers (worldschoolers!) in lovely San Miguel de Allende at the Family Adventure Summit for workshops and excursions.
*Fee paid to the Family Adventure Summit.
- Rancho Viejo, Nov 4 – 8 (add-on #2)
Collaborate on a project that gives back to a small rural Mexican village with a Peace Corps volunteer.
*Fee paid to local hosts for room and food.
Main trip: Mexico City Tour, Oct 20 – Oct 25
We provide…
Teaching and Learning
We’ll facilitate pre- and post- trip workshops and provide multi-age learning materials and projects for your family to lengthen and deepen the possibilities of this trip. We aim to emphasize learning immersively and thematically through travel in community. It’s not just about the 6 days we’re in Mexico City together; it’s about the preparation, conversations, projects, and reflections that extend far beyond the trip that are also important.
The life experiences, the learning, and the personal connections that come from group study paired with group travel are difficult to encapsulate.
It’s worldschooling!
“Worldschooling” can be defined and interpreted in different ways.
For us, worldschooling means to learn through, with and about the world as the driving force of our curiosity. For us, worldschooling is much more than studying another culture, taking a trip, or learning a language – it’s a lens through which to view learning and a process of always reaching for a better understanding of people and places beyond us.
Educational Components
This is where what we are offering is different from most tours available. This trip can be a major component of your family’s homeschooling experience for the fall semester.
- Learning Topics: Cultural awareness, Geological study of Mexico City, indigenous Mexico, colonialism, Spanish language, art and music, local life and traditions, archeology, and more…
- Resources List of books and documentaries to use at home
- Customized trip book for each child to interact with before and during the trip
- Projects such as creating a group guide book, Mexico-inspired creative writing, doing research, conducting interviews with local Mexican people, art projects such as Lucha Libre mask designs and Frida Kahlo-inspired self portraits, and more…
- 3 Pre-trip Workshops: Presentations, discussions, and learning activities that build our travel community and introduce the topics (through the projects above) that we’ll be exploring in Mexico City
- 1 Post-trip Workshop to serve as a culmination and reflection of our time together
As we explore new information, we’ll keep these focal questions at the forefront: How does this information help us better understand Mexico and its people? In what ways can we relate to what we’re learning about Mexico? How does our new knowledge change the way we think and should it change the way we act? If we engage in these learning topics together before our trip, exploring them first hand in Mexico will be that much more meaningful.
We’ll schedule three 2-3 hour organized workshops between Sept-Oct and send families home with materials and optional things to discuss (Mexican immigration), practice (Spanish), research (where to try the best Mole sauce in Mexico City) and create (how to build a cardboard pyramid) in between workshops. If additional group meet-ups before the trip spring up, like dinner together at a Mexican restaurant to practice ordering in Spanish or a Frida Kahlo documentary night in someone’s living room, then great, we’ll be there! We want to build community and a group curriculum around the wonders of Mexico before our trip.
Mexico City Itinerary: Guiding
We will plan the logistics and lead a 6-day tour of Mexico City that will likely include the sites and experiences below. For some things, we’ll arrange a local tour guide, for others we’ll do the guiding ourselves, and for some you’ll guide yourselves. This isn’t a full-service, full-guided tour. We will plan and navigate much of what we do together, but we’ll leave room for your own decision-making and independence as travelers.
- Frida Kahlo’s House
- Ballet Folklorico performance at Palacio de Bellas Artes
- Museo Nacional de Antropologia
- Zocalo (main historic square), Palacio Nacional (colonial palace with series of Diego Rivera murals that tell the story of Mexican history)
- Street Markets (to eat, to shop, to marvel at the bounty)
- Teotihuacan pyramids, archeological site with 3rd largest pyramid in world (day trip outside Mexico City)
- Parks, playgrounds, street murals
- Lucha Libre wrestling match (theatrical wrestling performance)
Here is the registration link!
Things You May be Wondering About
Health and Safety:
While we don’t want to minimize anyone’s concerns, we are of the firm mind that Mexico City and the surrounding area is a safe part of the world to visit with children. Mexican people are very family-oriented. They regularly greet total strangers, local or foreign, with a “buenos dias” and a smile. Mexico City is a huge urban area; just like Philadelphia, we travel prepared with the knowledge of where to go and where to avoid.
On several occasions, Melissa’s family received excellent, free or low-cost medical care in Mexico for ailments that can pop up anywhere like ear infections and asthma. There are well-stocked drug stores all over the city with even more over the counter options than we have here.
Freedom:
You don’t need to do all meals or activities with our group. Go eat with your family at restaurants you want to try! We will plan full days for whoever wants to join us, but we also encourage you to explore on your own. Take space when you and your people need it. Skip a tour and just head to the playground if keeping it simple helps you to keep it real with your kids. It’s your trip!
Disclaimer!
We’re NOT organizing a comfy, touristy, all-inclusive experience. We’re focusing on educational benefit and budget-travel skills. Travel on a budget to foreign countries is never without its challenging moments, but those moments can be fun when we rough them with friends, and they sure do build character! Some typical situations to expect:
- There will be lines that the kids don’t want to stand in.
- The showers may not have the water pressure you’d like.
- Your Airbnb might look better in the photos than it does in person.
- The mild salsa will be too spicy.
- You’ll ask for your child’s taco without onions, and it will come with onions anyway, so you will carefully pick off the onions while said child makes a scene about it – which will entertain the friendly taco vendor. (Been there!)
- The air conditioning and the seatbelts might not work in the taxi.
- The taxi will drive faster than you’d like.
BUT, it will all be ok – it will be great, actually.
The memories will be rich, the learning experiences vivid, the connections personal, and a few paletas (popsicles) will ease the way.
Add-On Trips
Add-on #1 San Miguel de Allende
Attend the Family Adventure Summit OR do your own thing in San Miguel.
October 30th – Nov 2 (Day of the Dead is celebrated this week!)
There’s a traveling family conference in San Miguel de Allende called Family Adventure Summit, https://familyadventuresummit.com/
San Miguel de Allende (SMA) is 3-4 hours from Mexico City and easily accessible by bus. It’s a lovely town, frequented by travelers, which is why besides providing Mexican culture and its famously gorgeous cathedral, it also provides the ease of familiar amenities. SMA is the perfect town to try out your traveling skills even if you don’t plan to attend the summit. After our week in Mexico City as a group, you’ll have the confidence to launch on your own!
The Family Adventure Summit is hosted by a long-time traveling and digital nomad family. The summit includes 4 days of kids’ programming, and adult learning/discussion sessions on all topics related to travel, alternative education/worldschooling, and alternative parenting. Around 400 people are expected to attend.
We are leading a children’s musical theater program themed on Day of the Dead for the summit, which will culminate in an original performance, of course! We would love it if your children were involved in our theater project, but there are other fun children’s programming options as well. The summit is a chance to greatly expand your worldschooling community of people and ideas.
If you’d like to attend the summit, you would pay them directly for tickets which are priced based on the number of people in your family, https://familyadventuresummit.com/tickets/. There are Airbnbs in SMA, as well as nice family hostels for your budget. SMA lodging and food prices are slightly higher generally than in Mexico City.
Add-on #2 Rancho Viejo, Volunteer project in a rural village
November 4 – 8
We’ll travel 3-4 hours by private van from San Miguel de Allende to Rancho Viejo, a very small rural village. We have a good friend there, Daniel Farmer, who is stationed as a Peace Corps volunteer. His work is to support the community in various ways, but particularly in the area of environmental conservation and education. We will stay with and eat meals with host families. We will work with the local children in this village to create a children’s play based on themes from the children’s book, The Giving Tree.
The cost of this volunteer experience will be roughly $50/person for the week, which includes lodging and three meals a day with a host family (paid directly to the host family). We will also make a group donation to the village or a project.
*Because of the limited number of local hosts in this village, we can only bring a couple of families on this volunteer experience.
Please reach out to us with any questions that you might have. We would love to have you join us on this learning adventure!