Island School

One of the most common questions we are asked while cruising with kids concerns education.

We plan to cruise for two to five years, and want the kids back in normal school before they reach high school to develop friendships with other kids their own age.

We must ensure the kids are on the same level or perhaps more advanced when they are re integrated back into normal life.

We try to do two or three hours of school five days a week in port and at sea. “Weekends” are days taken off when it’s rough or when it suits our program.

Schooling is not easy for any of us and it takes a lot of effort to enforce the basics of education. Emilie and I must go back in time to remember how hard it is to remember the difference between b’s or d’s, p’s, q’s and 9’s and the basics of grammar (which I am not very good at and you will probably find lots of grammatical errors in this blog!)

Regular school creates a routine for the kids and we find that if we give them two or three hours of our full attention in the morning results in them being more independent for the remainder of the day.

Daily school classes focus on reading, writing, spelling and maths. We touch on other subjects during school hours but science, geography, languages and social studies are part of the general days learning. Emilie and I try to share the education responsibility equally, but I must admit that Emilie takes the leading role when I have maintenance or navigation to take care of. We found Twinkle to be an excellent resource for curriculum’s and learning activities. http://www.twinkl.com

Today I woke up to Issy fully awake and dressed, asking “how does electricity move along a wire?” I opened my eyes and began to murmur somthing about atoms and their electrons…. An hour later, with my morning coffee charging my own electrons, we sat down and started our normal school day of phonetics, vowels, then two times tables, followed by a science lesson on Atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons, conductivity, dis-similar metals and magnets. Concluding in making batteries out of bits and bobs onboard. It was very hard to demonstrate magnesium on an Aluminium yacht with no magnetic material onboard, but we managed to find a pair of scissor and a coin that were magnetic (copper coin found in search no longer onboard Aluminium yacht – lesson in galvanic action to follow!)

Later in the day we were touring Tenerife in the hire car and spotted a wind and solar farm. We were privileged to be able to walk right under a wind turbine. I did some work in 2012 building wind farms in Denmark so it was fun sharing my knowledge with the kids.

We try to involve the kids with navigation and passage planning, a every day example of maths and geography. It takes a bit longer but it is fun to break down the calculations into segments easy enough for the kids to calculate distance and time.

Max and Issy were gifted a Tony box, a little speaker with figurines that you place on top and they tell a story. Many of our figurines are about nature, space and animals and we are all becoming quite knowledgeable from this fun audible encyclopedia. Max and Issy are becoming walking encyclopedias of marine life and space!

We plan to depart Tenerife early next week to sail towards Cp Verde then onto the Caribbean, and we are excited to learn about new countries and cultures.