We are indebted to our local primary school, whose Head so generously permitted us to take the children out of school for this grand tour. James has met many couples cruising with children on his ocean voyages, and all demonstrated that a cruising education allows children to absorb so much knowledge about their world. However, we need to ensure that they keep up with their peers at home so that they are not disadvantaged on their return in September 2013.
We had planned to be joined by a friend and primary teacher in Barbados, but planning so far in advance has meant that she is unable to commit now, leaving us to be the teachers. To this end, we have had the assistance of the school in advising us of the curriculum, and yesterday we purchased a mountain of study guides to work through on our voyage.
We have also been trying to apply the children's current homework to our voyage and this week the topic was "points of the compass." The children are now employed drawing a map of the Caribbean islands we intend to visit, and will then write a narrative describing our route in terms of basic directions. We'll have them both fluent in almanac work and sextant sightings by the time we return...
We had planned to be joined by a friend and primary teacher in Barbados, but planning so far in advance has meant that she is unable to commit now, leaving us to be the teachers. To this end, we have had the assistance of the school in advising us of the curriculum, and yesterday we purchased a mountain of study guides to work through on our voyage.
We have also been trying to apply the children's current homework to our voyage and this week the topic was "points of the compass." The children are now employed drawing a map of the Caribbean islands we intend to visit, and will then write a narrative describing our route in terms of basic directions. We'll have them both fluent in almanac work and sextant sightings by the time we return...
They'll be fine - when I was little we lived in a remote area in an African country for a few years and my mum would just order the same books the primary school used back home in Europe, and then we worked our way through them.
ReplyDeleteWhenever we went back for a home visit and I joined the class for a few weeks I was far ahead of them as my mum never had to slow down for anyone and applied a fairly 1950s approach to standards and discipline.
Didn't make me very popular with the other kids though!