A warm welcome to Adventure Travel Family! We are a UK home educating (‘unschooling’) family with three children. A few years ago we upped sticks and took a family gap year, backpacking around Asia (our kids were 6, 5 and 2 at the time!)
Over the last few years we have become the most popular UK homeschooling blog and all of our homeschool blog posts and homeschool resources are free for you to use. There is nothing I love more than receiving messages from readers who have been encouraged to be bold and do something different with their family; whether that is a family gap year or a step towards home education. I write extensively about our gentle parenting approach, which is innate in our approach to home education.
You might be interested to see how our family works when we’ve never punished our kids, what our family do when we have no rules, how our kids learn without a curriculum and why we don’t limit screen time. Equally, our posts on the things to consider before home educating, the 10 most important (free) things you need to homeschool and 40 amazing advantages of homeschooling.
We also have a ton of blog posts on our family gap year in Asia, including destination guides and travel with kids tips.
We first visited Sri Lanka with our kids; our first day was chaos and ended up being rescued by wonderful strangers at 3am on Christmas Day (story at 04:13 in this Sri Lanka travel vlog). We ended up enjoying an amazing Sri Lanka safari in Udawalawe (see the video of our Sri Lanka safari with kids) and the famous scenic Kandy to Ella train ride as well as climbing Little Adam’s Peak with kids in tow. We discovered Sri Lanka’s secret beach, wrote a family friendly guide to Ella Sri Lanka, told our readers about the 5 things Sri Lanka does the best, and some things they don’t tell you about Sri Lanka! We got to see Blue Whales in Mirissa, we swam with turtles in Sri Lanka’s ocean and we found out why you shouldn’t visit Sri Lankan turtle hatcheries.
Next we headed to Thailand, where we spent a month with a charity working with refugees living on a rubbish dump. We enjoyed climbing the sticky waterfalls in Chiang Mai (where we spotted a giant emerald boa constrictor in the wild!) , we spent the day at a supposedly ethical Thailand elephant sanctuary and Patrick got into trouble with the law while getting our visas (oops).
We headed south and enjoyed the crazy buzz of Bangkok with kids where we visited the famous Bangkok Unicorn cafe, had locals laughing when our 2 year old decided to join the ladies giving foot massages on Khao San Road and enjoyed the best things to do in Bangkok with kids. We had a great time at the DreamWorld Bangkok theme park too, before discovering the best places to stay in Phuket with kids. We visited an amazing Thailand cat cafe in Phuket and found the best things to do in Phuket with kids (check out the crazy night buses!.
After Thailand it was time to head to Indonesia, specifically the beautiful island of Bali! We fell in love with Bali for these 10 reasons, and wrote about the best things to do in Bali with kids as well as the weird household chores we had to do while living there. fostered adorable Bali puppies, visited the only legit Bali turtle sanctuary, explored the most stunning rice terraces and waterfalls and wrote a guide to Ubud with kids. We also experienced several dangerous animals in Bali, as well as earthquakes and a tsunami warning. We ultimately ended our time there when our beautiful 5 year old daughter suffered a serious brain injury. Our plans to move permanently to Bali changed, and we are now back in the UK and enjoying our lives with our spectacularly ugly Sphynx cat (see a typical day in our unschooling life).
This website helps families find the courage to step out of the norm, to explore different ways of doing family life, and to educate or travel in new and amazing ways with their children.
Who runs this website?
Hannah works as a freelance journalist and blogger writing for international travel and parenting publications such as Family Traveller magazine, Natural Parent magazine and Families Online. Prior to starting this career she worked in a Pupil Referral Unit, teaching children with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties- hence her passion for parenting and homeschooling as well as travel.