Hi my name is Cydney and I am the face behind Go Little Adventurers!
Together with my husband, Jake, we have three beautiful children, whom we homeschool - or 'worldschool' as we like to call it. I can explain a bit more about that in a moment, but first a little bit about where I come from, and how we got to where we are!
I was born in South Africa, and due to my father's corporate job, I spent my childhood moving around a lot. In fact, by the time I turned 18 and left home, I had moved 21 times across 4 continents!
My parents instilled into my sister and I a love of travelling, exploring new foods, people, and cultures. This is something that has come with us into adulthood, and I don't see it ever going away.
From an educational perspective, I found that I had a love for history, geography, and storytelling. I had an innate curiosity and was always asking questions - that was until my teacher in Year 2 told me to put my hand down and stop being "such a know it all." From then on I hated school, I hated the way we were taught, and the way we were tested. Couple that with the introduction of personal laptop's and smart phones at age 12, and the system lost me; 'me' being the unique and individual person that I was born as.
I didn't connect all of these things together until I had my own children, and I realised how curiosity, creativity, and a love of learning, are built into us from birth, and it's the standardised school system, and the overwhelm of technology that kills it. That was when I started looking into alternative options, and found 'Unschooling.'
Unschooling doesn't have to be radical and extreme like some think it is; it's just a matter of moving away from the ideology and structure of what a 'typical' school day should look like, and realising that children are natural-born learners, and that when they're given the right tools, can excel in anything. They will seek the knowledge that they need, and retain every ounce of information that they find, simply because they are excited to be learning!
This is where my love of the term 'Worldschooling' comes into play. We have moved away from the typical ideology of school learning, based around textbooks and facts being forcefully presented to a bored and uninterested cohort; and we instead learn just by living and being part of the world.
We travel, we go on adventures, we speak to people, we see new places, we experience new cultures, see remnants of history... The excitement of it all overwhelms me, and I can only do my best to ensure that the same fire and passion for learning and travelling will stay ignited in my children.
Psychology has proven that being interested in something raises the amount of information you will retain. So when children are genuinely interested, the learning tends to stick. That's my whole ethos in a nutshell.
This is also why I made Go Little Adventurers. We had just had our third child, and were about to take the 3 of them on their first overseas trip. I searched the internet for travel activities that were aesthetic and educational, and that were specific to the places we were going, and came up short. So of course I decided to make them..
Cut forward to the present, and I have made over 30 hand-illustrated activity sheets and bundles that promote an excitement and eagerness to learn on your travels. I only hope to keep going, with a goal of making one for every city in the world... Wish me luck and I better get back to it.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope to create a lot more content as we go on more adventures together!
Cydney
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