One of our core duties as parents is educating our children. Its quite a bit easier when ashore then when cruising. The resources available in a town, even a small one are remarkable compared to homeschooling on a boat. There are teachers, coaches, after school activities, computers, sports, libraries. Plus, one essentially outsources the education to a school. Obviously, the responsibility is still the parents’
On the boat space is limited, as you would expect. That alone limits what can be brought along to educate your kids. But with imagination, some luck and networking you can find craft an experience that beats what any school offers…
This is how we home-school on Ventolines…
First, lets cover how we choose a curriculum. There are multiple ways to create a home school. One could un-school. You can purchase all in one packages and you can pick subjects individually then mix and match. Many of these can be online or offline and this brings up the first question. How connected will you be?
At first glance, you may think that you will have internet everywhere you go and you might. But how good will it be and if you don’t have it or its terribly slow (often the case) how will you overcome this?
For us, we knew we would travel to places with reasonably good internet, but what about on passages? So or more even though, we chose complete curriculum that would function untethered to the internet.
Since we are not teachers by trade and were new to homeschooling we selected complete packages. How did we pick? We joined a home school association and from it we received a ton of advice. But we also had friends that have done home school for a long time and their advice was invaluable. But the key element is the child. Wyatt is a hands on learner. When engaged with books and paper he does well. So our first selection was a complete curricula and it came with lots of books, tests, answer keys and the like.
It was overwhelming for all of us. The recommended system had us eating as many hours a day of class time as a school. Was this right? We were stressed and our pressure on Wyatt stressed him. But after discussing with other boat families we decided to relax and not focus on getting all homework/problems done but to aim for complete understanding…
In year 2 we switched to computer based but un-tethered system. Everything was in the Computer Based Training (CBT). The software scheduled everything and tracked all progress; it even has convenient reports on grades and attendence, should we place him back in school. It made life a lot easier on the parents 🙂 Wyatt was not in love with it, as it was more self paced and we did not have as much interaction.
Year 3 we switched back to books. Its moderately self paced. But we work along side him on many days to ensure he has both the interaction and immediate feed back he craves. We do carry some items to augment his school experiences like a Microscope.
But what’s the point of traveling all the time if you can’t work that in as part of school? We look for opportunities to work school into everything we do. Cooking? Yep great time to cover math skills. Going offshore? Navigation is a good time to cover math, but when we see bioluminescence we switch to a science class and a land fall is a good time to discuss geography.
We do actual school work about 2 to 3 hours a day. But when we do have access to other families or the internet we can insert other types of instruction. For instance, an online drama class, through outschool.com
Or we meet another family of cruisers that don’t speak English and we use that time to introduce French or maybe even Spanish…
The point is to have some flexibility. Have fun and explore the world as if its the purpose for education; we think it is.