Homeschooling in an Airstream

"How do you do it?" If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me that in the last year, I would have an excellent hands-on homeschool math activity. Almost everyone asks some version of this question when they find out I live in an Airstream that I work and homeschool from.

Truthfully? The same way you do. One day at a time. Our experience is quite different from others who choose home education, but are not all experiences different to some extent? My classroom is a lot smaller, and a lot less Instagram-ready.

How I Ended Up Living and Homeschooling in an Airstream

Before I tell you what my days look like, let me share a bit about how I ended up here. It is a long story, so here is the short version. It started with having a baby while living in a one-bedroom apartment. We were content with a small space. Eventually we needed to move somewhere bigger, but no apartment complexes would lease a one-bedroom to a family of three. As our space grew, so did our belongings. We realized we wanted to downsize, a process that took several years.

In 2013, we ended up living in a tiny rental house. During our time there we started exploring the idea of building a tiny house. We even got on the wait-list for our preferred builder. Most of our free time was devoted to designing tiny house layouts, planning, and researching. It was a year-long wait list, so we had a great deal of time before we had to put any money down. During that time we came across information that made us reconsider our decision.

Our search took us, where else, to Craigslist. One night we found her: our beautiful little Airstream Argosy. We knew right away she had to be ours. Within a couple of weeks we owned her and began researching a whole new kind of project. Our Airstream renovation took about a year and we moved in the following fall. We are currently stationary but plan to travel full-time within the next couple of years.

It has been an adventure in personal space, planning, organizing, and so much more. It has especially been an adventure in homeschooling. We cannot have a beautiful Montessori-inspired homeschool room in this tiny little home. I have to exercise a great deal of self-control about what I bring in. And we are having educational experiences we never could have imagined would come from this way of life.

📊 The Montessori principle of the prepared environment, reimagined: Maria Montessori believed that the physical environment is the child's third teacher, after the parent and the materials themselves. She designed her classrooms to be beautiful, ordered, and scaled to the child. Living in 210 square feet forces exactly the kind of intentionality Montessori advocated: every material earns its place, nothing is superfluous, and the environment is kept orderly because there is no alternative. Research on environmental psychology (Evans, 2006, Annual Review of Psychology) confirms that children in smaller, well-organized spaces show better focus and lower stress than children in cluttered, larger ones. The Airstream classroom, by necessity, embodies Montessori's prepared environment principles more faithfully than many purpose-built homeschool rooms.

My School Day Looks a Little Different Than Most

Homeschooling in general is a significant commitment. Doing it in a tiny space has real advantages and real challenges. We have to build our classroom every single day. School happens in the living room, which is also the dining room, my office, my yoga studio, and my bedroom. We build it up and tear it down every day. This adds time to our routine.

Everything has to be put away as soon as we are done. In such a small space, things get messy quickly, and there is no room to leave anything out. During our school day, we spend a meaningful amount of time putting away books and materials after each lesson is complete.

We do not have beautiful Montessori shelving, which I often wish for. Instead, manipulatives are stored in the drawer next to my son's pajamas. Items we are not currently using are stored in upper cabinets. Sometimes I do not plan well and we have to spend extra time taking everything down to find what we need. Some days I love how neat and tidy we keep things. Other days I find the extra time genuinely frustrating.

As much as possible, we have school outside. It is not unusual for us to haul everything out to a mat on the grass. One of our goals with living small was to spend more time outdoors. We wanted a space so small that we felt drawn outside for more room. That has absolutely been our experience. Even with only three of us, the space fills up quickly. We end up outdoors or loading up our materials and heading to a local park often.

Frustrations and disagreements are more acutely felt in a tiny space. If a lesson is difficult or we are not getting along, it can be intense. Even though my son has his own room, it feels much closer when that room is three feet away rather than on the other side of a house. We generally get along very well, but when we need space, it can be hard to find. Nothing can be left on the back burner. We have also learned a great deal about handling frustration and disappointment with grace.

"The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth."
-- Maria Montessori

🏠 On the flip side Homeschooling and living in a tiny space has made us so much closer. We have to communicate honestly and deal with things as they arise. We are grateful for the chance to snuggle up and read literature together. We love laughing and writing silly stories side by side. I know all homeschool parents enjoy these sweet moments. Somehow they feel different in a cozy, tiny space. There is a Danish concept called Hygge, the feeling of warmth, coziness, and togetherness, that I never fully understood until we started living this way. When we are sitting inside having a wonderful lesson together, I feel it completely.

My Encouragement to You

Nearly as often as people ask me how I do it, I have people say they have always wanted to try something like this. It is a genuinely challenging lifestyle, much harder than we imagined it would be. It is also far more rewarding than we thought it would be. We love it, and the advantages clearly outweigh the difficulties for our family.

It never hurts to try something new. Pack up your ShillerLearning materials, find a small space to try it in, and see what happens. There is a whole community of roadschoolers and tiny-living families waiting to welcome you. It is full of homeschoolers from all walks of life, all over the world. The classroom does not have to be big to be extraordinary.