Ensuring that Dylan’s education on our trip continues to meet curriculum requirements is one of our highest priorities. In fact, it is one of the few deal breakers for us. If that piece did not work out, we would stop the trip early and return home. As you would expect that is the last thing we want to have happen so we are preparing thoroughly for success with his schooling. That preparation includes talking with Dylan constantly about our expectations of him when it comes to this essential part of our trip.

Over the years we have followed as many sailing families as we can through books such as Voyaging With Kids – A Guide to Family Life Afloat as well as families with YouTube sailing channels and websites. We are happy to see that there is a community of sailing families who boat school their children out there and we will be doing all we can to search them out in our travels. At times families will come together with educational delivery. This is sometimes done by having one parent teach lessons to kids from several boats who are all at similar education levels. We weren’t surprised to hear that as we already know that sailors are a resourceful group of people, and it is common practice for a sailor go out of their way to help another sailor. Should we find ourselves in an anchorage with other boat schooling families we will likely find that we will follow the same school hours as other families. Much to Dylan’s delight, because we will be teaching him directly, he will only have school in the morning hours. We just simply will be able to get through more by teaching him one on one compared to a teacher who is responsible for educating an entire class. We are planning to have his school days run Monday to Friday from 8:30 AM to noon with a break in the middle of the morning. We read about how sometimes kids on their boats will make a special flag that gets raised up the mast when school in underway in order to communicate to others to not come and disturb them. In those scenarios we are told that it is often seen that as soon as noon hits on school days, you will see kids instantly connecting and heading to shore to play and explore.  

Back in February we met with our wonderful homeschooling liaison officer through Manitoba Education and Training, and she has put us on track to plan and identify which resources we want to use to teach him. On our trip he will be doing his junior high school years – grades six, seven and eight. Although we do not know yet if we will be returning to Manitoba after our trip, we decided early on in this process that we would be following the Manitoba curriculum as that just made sense to us and is what we are obviously familiar with. We are required to teach him the four main subjects: language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. Other areas such as physical education, music, art, languages are optional but encouraged. Each year I will be required to develop and submit a homeschooling program outline as well as progress reports each January and June.

One of the neat parts of our trip is how we are going to be able to incorporate into Dylan’s education so many portions of our daily life while we travel. Jason and I are both quite excited about that.  For example:

Science learning opportunities:

• Weather – Our life will be 100% guided by weather while living on the sailboat. 
• Biology – Diversity of living things is one of the science areas we will be covering. As a scuba diver he will be able to examine and explore marine biology firsthand.
• Astronomy – I love the idea of doing a ‘night school session’ on a clear night out on the water to study things like human conception of the position of Earth in space and how that conception has changed over time. I have always had a fascination with astronomy, and I am excited to also learn along side him!

Math learning opportunities:

• Length, area, volume and angles – These are all items included in the shape and space segment of the math curriculum. There will be many ways that we can relate those teachings through things like sail surfaces and effects of sail trim or by calculating distances travelled.
• Currency – By travelling to different countries we will have many chances have him practice currency conversion to help reinforce some of his newly learned math concepts. 

Social Studies learning opportunities:

• Citizenship – Identity, culture and community are one of the knowledge categories we are to cover. We will be incorporating this into our experiences we will have learning from the various cultures and history of the countries we will visit along the way.
• Geography – Dylan will be very much a part of various route planning as we go. We also want our experiences to teach him not only location mapping but also the different physical features of our world.

Language Arts learning opportunities:

• Writing – We will be encouraging Dylan to document his experiences as much as possible trough journaling and storytelling to further develop his creative writing. I will encourage him to put special attention into areas like, grammar, spelling, punctuation, character motivation, plot development and symbolism.
• Reading – I have been waiting for a long time to finally see Dylan transition from reading because we tell him to into him developing a love for getting lost in a good book. It has finally happened and just in time! We will ensure he has lots to read for leisure on the boat and I am right now reviewing options for recommended novels for grade 6 and considering My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George as one that I think he would like!

Music/Physical Education/Language learning opportunities:

• Dylan plays guitar and ukulele so we will be bringing those instruments along for him to continue with.
• Swimming and scuba diving will be activities he enjoys and is looking forward to doing frequently!
• Although not fluent in French, Jason knows quite a bit and will be taking the lead on teaching him French.

Despite all the educational experiences we will do our best to draw from our travels, we will not be able to cover all the curriculum requirements that way.  I have also selected textbooks and teaching resources to bring for math, science and social studies. In addition, I have purchased a full grade 6 curriculum bundle of assignments and assessments from a fantastic website called https://www.teacherspayteachers.com. I see that website also has great looking study package for that My Side of the Mountain should I decide on that novel to do with him. Perfect!

As much as possible we will follow a regular school year with summers off as well as break at Christmas and spring break. This means that grade six on the boat will start in September. Several weeks after that, according to our plan, we will be getting off the Great Lakes and shipping our mast south to begin our adventures motoring down the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers towards the Gulf of Mexico. We plan to motor about 5 hours a day for that leg of our trip which works out perfectly for school. The engine is quite loud when you are down inside the boat with it running. Each day we will not fire up the engine until school has finished for the day at noon and will be stopping to anchor each day around supper time. We do know that there are going to be some days that will work better than others. There will be days when he won’t feel like doing it, especially when we get to some tough stuff that he will have to work harder at than others. I have told him he had better listen to his teacher those days as she’s in a very serious romantic relationship with his principal…to which he rolls his eyes at me and groans!

There certainly will be some trial and error with schooling along the way but by the time we hit salt water in Mobile, Alabama, I am hopeful, and fully expecting, that we will have found our groove with the process and be enjoying a consistent routine that works for us all. And if I have it my way – we will be having a lot of fun with it too!

Next week I will answer the question – Aren’t you scared of things like storms, riptides and sharks?