Friday, July 24, 2009

Boat School


One of the questions we're often asked is, "Are you taking Maia with you?" That one puzzles us. The next question is always, "How will you educate her?"

There's a lot of stuff that happens naturally on a boat. Maia's urge to communicate with her friends ensures she works on her writing, our forays into the natural world include numerous lessons in biology, our travels to other countries should cover geography, culture and history quite nicely, sailing provides endless lessons in physics and navigating covers quite a bit of math.

And to supplement all of this we're throwing in some traditional schooling.

A few weeks before we left, we visited the Vancouver School Board's distance learning teacher. We chatted with her about our trip and our needs, then went to a warehouse and picked up a big box of books.

The books will be interesting - they'll give Maia something to do on slow mornings when Evan has chores or I have assignments. And they'll provide us with a framework to make sure we haven't forgotten to teach her something vital.

Her education will happen all the time though - and I believe her deepest learning won't come from text books, but will be found in the moments when she learns what a gust looks like as it gathers speed on the water, or when she interacts with animals on the beach...

2 comments:

boatbaby said...

When people ask about taking the kid or people mention not being able to cruise "because of the kids." I always say, we're not going in spite of Zach, we're going BECAUSE of Zach. He is our primary motivation. I know you know what I mean.

Diane, Evan, Maia and Charlie the cat said...

That's one of the big differences I'm looking forward to this time. Cruising pre-kid had some fantastic benifits for us. But I'm really looking forward to seeing the effects on her.
So far so good.