Family gap year
A gap year with your kids, and a school they will love
A family gap year is a year away from normal life, together. Parents take a sabbatical or work remotely, and the children spend the year at schools around the world. Wide Eyed Kids helps you plan it: pick the schools, find a home near each one, and line the stays up into one year.
What a family gap year can look like
Some families spend the whole year in one place, such as Lisbon or Chiang Mai. Others split it: a term at a surf school in Portugal, a term in a jungle school in Costa Rica, a term in Bali. Each stay is 3 months or longer, so the children settle in and make friends.
Between stays there are holidays for travel. Many schools also run holiday camps of one to eight weeks if you want the children busy while you explore.
Keeping school on track during a gap year
Children who follow the IB, Cambridge or British curriculum can often join a school abroad that uses the same programme, which makes coming home easier. Montessori and Waldorf children can find schools that teach the same way.
Filter by curriculum on the schools page and ask each school how it will report your child's progress.
Budgeting for a gap year with kids
The two biggest costs are school fees and rent. Wide Eyed Kids shows both: the school's monthly fee in US dollars and the usual range for a family home nearby. Set a monthly budget and we show only the schools where school and home fit inside it.
You pay Wide Eyed Kids month by month by card. Nothing is charged until a school or home accepts your request.
Start with the kind of school
Places families choose
Questions families ask
Read more