Boat School

Educating your children is possibly the hardest part of family cruising. While there are some countries, like Australia, that have a homeschooling culture and the government education system is able to provide homeschooling packages to families, many of us are left to figure out what is best for us and our kids. So, here I have laid out what we have done for our kids. In no way am I suggesting that this is the best way to educate your children. This is just how we’ve done it.

First we chose a curriculum. Most people choose the curriculum from their country, province or state, but we have opted for an international school curriculum as the last school our children attended was an international school. We chose AERO.

Here is a link to the site where we found the curriculum: http://www.projectaero.org/ If this is not a curriculum that suits your needs start searching online for other province or state curriculum. Government institutions will have their standards published on their education websites for parents and teachers to access.

I then took the curriculum for Kindergarten and Grade 1 read through it and decided that I needed a textbook or program for Math. We chose Math Mammoth because it covered most of the outcomes set out by AERO, it came well recommended by homeschoolers, it was inexpensive and I could download the textbooks as PDFs and then print what I needed. For English Language Arts, I create the lesson plans using the AERO standards, however, I am using Literacy By Design for our learning to read program, and the 6 Traits +1 for the writing process. Science and Social Studies we do without a textbook as the standards are all we need for now. We have been trying to fit in Art and Music, but to be honest after we cover the core subjects we are about done. We do a lot of drawing on the boat and we have a ukulele and recorder for the girls to play and a couple of apps on the iPad to help them along with their musical learning.

Our philosophy is keep it simple, keep it fun and keep it relevant to them. We try to start school by 8AM, the girls are awake at 6AM most days, and we try to be finished by 11AM. This sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t it just depends on moods, mostly.

Below is a list of items I have found useful for our day to day lessons, hope you find it useful.

School Supplies:

•         Small lap white boards, one for each child and one for me
•         Lots of whiteboard markers, preferably the Expo thin markers
•          Deck of Cards
•          Think Fun Dice Games for Kids
•          Uno
•       Counters of some kind, could be plastic bottle tops or fancy wooden tokens, used in many different ways for Math
•          Index Cards of various sizes
•          Markers
•          Coloured Pencils
•          A good pencil sharpener, preferably a few as sometimes they go missing
•          Erasers
•          Pencils
•          Ruler
•          Outdoor thermometer, good for Math and Science
•          Plastic sleeves for binders, I can print off a worksheet or game and put it in a sleeve then the kids can complete it over and over again using a whiteboard marker.
•          Notebooks for Writing
•          Pattern Blocks
•          Unifix cubes or something similar
•          Abacus
•          Lots of great picture books non-fiction and fiction
•          Sticky Tack for sticking work up on the walls
•          Calendar
•          Construction Paper
•          Scissors
•          Gluesticks (lots)
•          Magic School Bus books or movies
•          Workbook for a Grade, such as Brain Quest’s Workbook, though Mind Ware is also a popular choice though not all subjects are sold in one book. I use the Brain Quest workbooks as review, reinforcement or a way to warm-up their brains for school.