Worldschooling in Italy With Kids: What Our Children Learned in a Village
When people hear “worldschooling” they usually picture homeschooling on the road, a kids club, or months living in a cohort of families from your own country. It can be any of those. It is also much simpler than that. Any trip can be a worldschooling opportunity, and with young kids the version that works best for us is putting them alongside local children, so they experience the trip from their own point of view.
A child would much rather be in a classroom with Italian kids than visit a church they cannot grasp yet. That is the idea behind worldschooling in Italy the way we do it, and it is the heart of our Roots & Future residency in Ormea, a 1,000-year-old village in Piedmont.
Roots & Future, our worldschooling family residency in Ormea, runs again May 8 to 17, 2027. Get the details by email, see the residency, or follow along on @bravefamilyroots.
The art class that changed the week
Giorgia teaches art to the children of Ormea in her own free time at her art lab, L’Ippo CreAttivo. When she heard about the residency, she added extra classes so the visiting children could join the town’s kids. Everything happened in Italian.
That class did something no itinerary could. From that day on, our kids knew children in the village. They waved to them in the street and played together. Their parents knew the parents. The whole family was plugged into the town. Later in the week the kids had a pizza party with village children, and by then nobody needed an introduction.
The elephant-fox
When we first visited Ormea in May 2026, my daughter went into Giorgia’s class for about an hour. She did not speak a word of Italian. She came out running, having invented a new animal, a cross between an elephant and a fox. She had drawn it and built the costume: a tail and ears she designed herself. She spent the rest of that week playing with the friends she made in that room.
That is the whole argument for worldschooling with young kids in one hour. No vocabulary list. No worksheet. A room, a teacher who cares, and children who want to play together.
What kids learn in an Italian village
Language, without a lesson
In October we had two-year-olds with us, and by the end of the ten days they were saying things in Italian.
Food and where it comes from
They made fresh pasta with Martina and Anna, harvested chestnuts in the forest with Anna and roasted them over a fire by the river. Food stopped being something that arrives on a plate. Read about the pasta class here.
History from the people who lived it
The nonni walked us through their town and took us through four floors of a museum that shows how families lived here. History lands differently when the person telling it grew up in that street.
Making things with their hands
Felt trees in art class, ornaments made from local fabric with Anna, pasta shaped by hand. Our kids came home with things they made, not things we bought.
Nature and freedom
Trails start about ten minutes from the café. The kids walked to the forestry school, played by the river and ran up and down the old town. One parent wrote, “I loved that the kids could just run around the town street!”
How worldschooling fits with regular school
Our daughter goes to school in Málaga. We have also enrolled her for short stays in schools in Japan, Spain, Italy and Peru, and in ski school in the French Alps, where every resort runs ski classes and kids pick up the language along the way. We are not choosing between school and worldschooling. We use travel to show our kids how big and kind the world is.
Ten days in the spring fits around most school calendars.
Worldschooling in Italy: practical tips
- Pick a small place. In a village, kids see the same children every day, which is how friendships form.
- Find one local activity with children. An art class, a sports club, a summer camp. One shared room is enough.
- Slow down. One base for ten days beats a new hotel every night.
- Let kids lead. Follow what they are curious about, whether it is chestnuts, football or the accordion player.
- Learn ten words as a family before you go: hello, thank you, please, my name is, ice cream.
What worldschooling is not
It is not about ticking off countries or filling every hour with lessons. It is not about choosing between a school and the world. For us, it is about giving our kids real time with real people in a place, so the trip becomes theirs and not just ours. Some days that means a classroom. Some days it means a forest, a kitchen or a football match with half the town.
Do you have to be worldschoolers to join?
No. Roots & Future is for any family that wants their children to experience somewhere real, with the people who live there. Whether your kids go to school at home or in a building makes no difference.
Watch it for yourself: our October residency recap reel and the pasta class reel. Follow @bravefamilyroots for the full story, day by day.
Roots & Future runs again May 8 to 17, 2027
A ten-day worldschooling family residency in Ormea, a 1,000-year-old village in Piedmont. You live in the village, your kids learn alongside the children who live there, and the money you spend stays with the people who host you.
Get the full details by email · See the residency and book your spot
See every day of it on Instagram: @bravefamilyroots for the residency and @bravefamilytravel for our family travels.