School’s Out for Summer

The decision to remove the children from school to sail the Caribbean was not one we took lightly. Homeschooling the children was a concern, and I would often joke that it was the scariest part of this whole adventure. Back in Ottawa, we had our share of crazy nights around the dining room table, trying to explain homework material to the kids. Not being teachers ourselves, we did not know how to break the material down to explain it in simple terms. Furthermore, we didn’t know how the material was being taught in school. This all was met with frustration from both our side and from the children. Many people had said to me, your plans sound fun, but there is no way I would be able to homeschool my children. I assume all the comments were based on similar homework experiences. Now, we were taking it on ourselves to educate our children for two years, scary! After 8 months of homeschooling, we have finally wrapped up the material for the first homeschool (a.k.a. boat school) year and I feel I am in a better position to share about our experiences.

I started with research, research and more research. Fortunately for me, there are many informative blogs out there written by homeschooling mothers. This gave me a lot of the fundamental knowledge I needed to jump into this challenge. First and foremost, we are fortunate because homeschooling is legal in Canada. This meant we had the opportunity to give our kids this incredible life experience, to gain an education not only from the classroom but from the world around them. In fact, in Ontario, it is a relatively simple process to notify the school and school board with a letter of intent to homeschool. After that, the world was our oyster. As for information the first place to start was the Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents, which had is a wealth of information on homeschooling in Ontario.
Generally, what we learned is, there are more or less three approaches to homeschooling. The first is a purchased curriculum where the student follows an online or distance education program. The second is where a parent follows their own curriculum and provides their own material. The third is referred to as unschooling, where the child leads their own education by exploring and investigating what interests them.

There were a few variables that helped determine our style, I knew I had to work within the constraints that boat schooling creates and we also wanted the kids to return to school when we finish our sailing adventure. As ‘cruisers’, we are always on the move, so we felt we couldn’t rely on being available at any particular date/time and we didn’t want to rely on having internet access. This made an already overwhelming task seem almost impossible. Additionally, with our backgrounds in engineering, Eryk and I are very structured people, therefore the concept of unschooling seemed a little too foreign and vague to us. This meant we really opted for something in the middle, we decided to follow the Ontario Curriculum set by the Ministry of Education as closely as we could, with the hopes that the kids would have an easier transition when they return to school. This ruled out using American or other non-Canadian curriculums. We looked for offline workbooks so that we did not have to depend on the internet, which led us to a great source by the Popular Book Company, you have probably even seen some of their workbooks in Costco or other book stores. For this first year, we opted for the Complete Canadian Curriculum which covered English, Math, Science and Social Studies. We ordered some french grammar workbooks from a company in Quebec and purchased some workbooks from a company called Solaro to further support the Complete Canadian Curriculum workbooks. Basically, this was our starting point, but we had many months to learn what worked and what didn’t and refine our plan.

Once we moved onto the boat, homeschooling began immediately. The kids were enthusiastic to jump in and start their homeschooling adventures. They opened up those workbooks and whipped through the lessons. They felt proud and happy when school was complete for the day and they had the rest of the day to themselves. This began my task of making sure they were getting a complete, in-depth education that we could all be happy with.

The biggest challenge that we quickly uncovered was that with three kids at three different levels (and I don’t mean grades I mean levels, primary, elementary and middle school), all with different learning needs we had a busy time ahead of us. Not only does this mean the materials were different, but the expectations were different and their schooling experience was different. The youngest had the least exposure to school life and the least opportunity to learn work ethic. While the eldest needed more advanced materials, more in-depth learning that could be done independently. And well the middle guy, well he was somewhere in the middle, sometimes a blend of the two, sometimes his needs were completely different and completely his own.

We tried a few different approaches to help the kids plan and organize their work and basically, we ended up with a different approach for each of them. The best advice that I found on one of the online blogs was the concept of “Mommy Meetings”. This allowed me to sit down with each kid and adjust their weekly learning plan to what was accomplished the week before, we could discuss any problems or issues and assign the work for the week ahead. This worked fabulously and the kids loved their one-on-one time.

The primary student needed structure to his week, he needed to know ahead of time what he was to work on so that he could open that book and complete the work without discussion or argument. The more variation there was to his week, the more interpretation there was to what it meant to complete the work. He worked best with a set schedule, so for example, Mondays he knew he was to do English Grammar, Math and Social Studies. On that day, he was able to turn to the next section of his workbook and complete that unit.

For the eldest, we wanted to encourage independent learning, so we discussed what was due for the week at the mommy meeting and it was left to her to schedule her week and accomplish all the work for the week. At first, we tried the electronic route and I put all her assignments into Google Classroom, which worked, but we later found it more time-efficient for her to just write her assignments down during the Mommy Meeting. This worked fabulously, she craved independence and took on the responsibility of completing the work without any issues or assistance in planning and organizing her week. I give a lot of credit for this to her school, Joan of Arc Academy, she had a fabulous experience while there and they formed her into the striving student she is today.

For our middle guy, he needed a schedule but set around his work requirements for the week, so when we received a gift of an ocean-themed agenda from a good friend of ours, the agenda became his. During mommy meetings, we determined what work he was to accomplish, broke it down by day and wrote it into his agenda.

We also discovered what worked and what didn’t with the workbooks, while some of them were perfect for the primary learner, with colorful pictures and brief explanations, they didn’t offer the depth that our elementary and middle school learners needed. This meant we adopted a continuous improvement approach based on what worked and what didn’t. In the end, we used a blend of workbooks supplemented with online textbooks, additional reading and writing assignments, science demonstrations, experiments, and research projects. In addition, we used the Solaro workbook as the basis for ensuring the kids were following the curriculum, with unit tests and end of the year exams.

The other aspect that we needed to figure out was grading, how could I grade their work when I had never seen examples of other students at their level, what should my expectations be? I decided to take a relaxed approach to this since I believe the grades are to demonstrate that the children learned the material, I felt I could do this without grading them. Therefore for any assignment, the kids did not receive a grade, they simply received feedback, what they did well and what could be improved on. As long as I saw improvements I felt that they were performing at their level, regardless of whether it aligned to their peers. I did, however, have the older children write the tests and exams provided in their workbooks for math and science. Again, I never recorded the grades, this was to practice writing tests in a relaxed atmosphere. I believe the lessons on how to study, how to be attentive and review their work will help them when they return to school and are required to write tests/exams in a pressured environment. I challenged them to improve on themselves and in the end, I believe that will make them into stronger and more confident students.

Now that we wrapped up a successful first year of homeschool, the kids will have their summer break, which will give me the opportunity to plan next year’s school work and maybe take a little break myself. I continuously seek out information, blogs, and books that can help guide our homeschooling experience. It seems I am always exchanging helpful hints with other boat school families and if you have any suggestions on something for us to try, please feel free to contact me, we are always looking to improve on our homeschooling experience.