Pam says: “These popular webinar presentations by Seven Seas Cruising Association are terrific because you can watch them from the comfort of your home or main saloon! All you [...]]]> Pam Wall, one of Women and Cruising‘s founders,  is presenting another webinar for Seven Seas University on Thursday, December 9 at 8PM Eastern Time.

Pam says: “These popular webinar presentations by Seven Seas Cruising Association are terrific because you can watch them from the comfort of your home or main saloon! All you need is your computer and internet, and there is a presentation right up close and personal!”

About Pam Wall

Pam sailed around the world in a 7-year adventure with her husband and young children before finding her important niche as West Marine’s Outfitting Manager.

In this role Pam has done much to support cruisers, both new and experienced, as she has through the many seminars she presents at boat shows across the country (including Women and Cruising Seminars) and the sailing she teaches annually at Women on the Water Week in the British Virgin Islands.

Read also on this website

• Pam WALL  Answers 12 Questions about Sailing as a Family aboard KANDARIK
• 12 Questions to 12 Sailing Families
• What Pam Wall likes Most about Cruising
• Galley Advice from Pam Wall

More information (external links)

• The Seven Seas University’s website
• The Seven Seas Cruising Association’s website
• Pam Wall’s website

With careful decision-making and sensible preparations – just what you need for going cruising in general – you can let your children profit from an incredible learning opportunity.

Just [...]]]> Taking your children’s education to sea is not always simple, but neither is it a deeply complicated mystery.

Once you capture a child’s interest, learning can be inspiring and fun.

With careful decision-making and sensible preparations – just what you need for going cruising in general – you can let your children profit from an incredible learning opportunity.

Just look at any of the inspiring stories of families interviewed by Women and Cruising!

Yes, it does add an extra task to the cycle of watches, meal preparation, and boat maintenance, but home schooling in such a unique situation can also be rewarding for parents and children alike.

You don’t have to be setting off on a circumnavigation to think about educating afloat. A summer cruise has endless possibilities, too! Often we think of education as something that happens in a school building, but education should be everywhere, every day.

In the words of Mark Twain: “I never let my schooling interfere with my education!”

The tips below will get you on your way. Take a breath, then take the plunge!

1. Keep it connected

The beauty of education on board is the opportunity for authentic, hands-on learning experiences. Snorkel on a reef, or study dolphins! Go to a history museum, then sail in the wake of explorers and settlers.

A field trip to tidal pools can be educational AND fun!

Even if you choose to follow a packaged home-schooling program (see below), make sure your children are connected to the world around them.

• What phase is the moon in?
• When is the next high tide?
• What causes these phenomena?

A child’s natural curiosity can be kindled with only a small hint, and you’re off on an interesting lesson!

If your line lands a fish, take the time for a biology session before cooking it up. Later, link the experience to a lesson in animal adaptations or human physiology. This might be a more traditional lesson, but the student will be much more engaged now that he or she has had the fish dissection as a lead-in.

Fish dissection

These are just a few examples.

As a parent-teacher, you will quickly learn to identify and make the most of teachable moments. Underway and at exotic landfalls, you will find endless opportunities.

It does, however, require some finesse to shape a general interest lesson into one that also develops critical skills (more on this below).

2. Choose carefully

Early on, carefully consider what type of learning program will suit your family best.

Home schooling packages such as that offered by the Calvert School are one convenient option.

The advantages of these are the learning-by-numbers security they offer parent-teachers; all the planning is done, all the materials provided, and some degree of professional support is often included.

Just by going to sea, however, you are taking yourself out of a cookie-cutter mold, so consider whether you want to use cookie-cutter learning for your kids.

Packaged programs often include irrelevant or impractical lessons, such as complicated science experiments unsuited to a rocking platform, or topics like the Industrial Revolution. Try getting your kids excited about that in, say, the Bahamas!

Other families create their own curriculum to suit their realities.

Visiting a plantation such as Marie Galante’s Chateau de Murat can be the centerpiece of an interdisciplinary unit on the Atlantic slave trade.

Colonization and slavery are chapters of history that can be covered well in the Caribbean, and physics lessons can be found all over the boat.

Learning can be completely student-centered, but you will be on your own in terms of materials, a problem that can be overcome with thorough research.

The greatest pitfall of independent design is the danger of leaving out difficult or inconvenient topics that are nevertheless critical to developing literacy and numeracy skills.

I met one sailing family whose incredibly intelligent boys could quote extensive passages from Homer but not write a full sentence at age ten. This is an extreme example, but the danger is there for well-meaning, loving parents who subtly transfer their own passions to their children while sweeping their weaknesses under the carpet.

You can avoid this trap by following the standards from your home school district and refer to them periodically: have we covered the depth and breadth of this curriculum? Did we practice all the required math and science skills?

Families with two or more children should consider what their choice of program means in practical terms.

If you use packaged programs, your children will be following unrelated strands of work. That creates quite the juggling act for the parent-teacher.

With a more independent approach, you can create a one-room schoolhouse in which everyone tackles the same topics but at different levels. While the youngest tracks his or her own water consumption and learns to make simple pictographs, the oldest can track overall water consumption on board and learn about graphic displays such as line graphs or pie charts. You will still be managing a circus, but at least all the action is in one ring!

A number of useful resources exist for those who take home schooling to sea. I have compiled many on a website, www.sailkidsed.net, including links to curriculum documents and a list of useful books and educational websites.

3. Do Your Homework

Whatever type of learning program you decide upon, you will have to prepare well, just as you must prepare your boat well for your cruise.

One important consideration will be your eventual plans:

• Will you come back home or do you plan to settle elsewhere?
• What are the curricula of those school systems?
• Will they demand to see an official transcript to place your child?

Most school districts provide full curricular documents online, and you will be able to download a list of standards, benchmarks and/or learning outcomes for every subject area and grade (these detail what your child should be able to do at the end of each unit in each grade level).

I am firm believer that parents who home school their children must conscientiously use such standards to guide their work. This requires some finesse, as the following examples demonstrate, but you will develop a knack for it.

Let’s say the kids are excited about volcanoes. In many prime sailing destinations, you will be among active, inactive, or extinct volcanoes, so conducting a basic lesson in volcanoes and geology will be easy. Approaching Martinique’s extinct volcano, Mt Pelé, under sail. This is just one of many Caribbean volcanoes with a fascinating story. Now check your list of standards for literacy and mathematics. How can you pull those in? - Take Virginia’s Grade 2 literacy standards, which include: “The student will write stories, letters, and simple explanations.” That means step two is writing an explanation of how volcanoes work, including self-editing and details like: “Use correct spelling for high-frequency sight words, including compound words and regular plurals.” - Now check the math standards, where you will find: “The student, given grid paper, will estimate and then count the number of square units needed to cover a given surface in order to determine area.”Adapt this by using a map and estimating the area your local volcano occupies. In this way, you encourage your child’s interests and keep learning real while developing subject-specific skills.

Print out complete curriculum documents and stock up on books and materials before setting off. You might be able to purchase textbooks used by the relevant school system and use them either in a traditional approach or within your own tailor-made program.

The difficulty here is in knowing what is useful and what is not before you actually set sail. Sorry, there is no easy answer here!

4. Keep it Fun

The world is your classroom! By using clear learning goals, you can ensure that field trips are valuable learning experiences that spark ongoing interest.

Learning can be fun!

If you find yourself locked below decks slaving over dull exercises on a regular basis, something is wrong.

It’s time to take a field trip – a proper field trip, armed with field guides, notebooks, and clear learning goals. Move your classroom to the foredeck or the beach occasionally. Spice up your child’s learning with fun exercises in a context your child can relate to.

If your learning program calls for writing a fictional story, great! Challenge your child to write a pirate story based on your sailing area with him or herself as one of the characters. Linking subjects is another way to make learning fun.

The pirate story could be set against the backdrop of a certain period in history, and it could sneak in a little math with a problem leading to the location of the hidden treasure chest.

Another example is to collect and identify shells, and then incorporate them in an art project. The list can go on and on.

If you treat learning as a heavy chore, your children will echo this attitude and everyone will suffer.

On the other hand, if you can establish a playful yet disciplined spirit and stimulate natural curiosity, learning will become an accepted part of your day and one of the richest points of the cruising experience.

5. Share the Load

Too often, Dad is the captain with Mom doing everything else: childcare, cooking, and, last but not least, teaching. A certain degree of division of labor is natural, but too much can put unfair strain on either partner.

With both parents sharing the teaching load to at least some degree, children can benefit from the strengths of each and from two different teaching styles. Not only that, they are more likely to accept education as a whole-family endeavor, just as the cruise should be a whole-family adventure.

6. Stop Worrying!

Another inspirational way to kick off a learning unit: the author and her son race in ancient Delphi’s stadium, Greece.

Just thinking about taking over your children’s schooling can be intimidating, much like sailing away to unfamiliar waters. Don’t get put off by doubts or by land-bound naysayers.

Countless families report that cruising with children is the best thing they have ever done, emphasizing the family time and eye-opening experiences their children benefit from.

Many also report that their children successfully streamline back into schools when the time comes, often academically ahead of their peers.

The truth is that cruising on a well-maintained boat can be safer and healthier than staying on land. Consider highway safety, or the germ breeding ground that schools can be.

Similarly, home schooling that is based on sound research and focused on clear goals can supersede what any walled classroom could ever offer.

The hardest thing is making the decision to go in the first place; after that, you will find that everything falls into place. Your children will enjoy the experience of a lifetime with the people who count most: their parents. And the lessons learned will guide them for a lifetime.

About Nadine Slavinski

Nadine Slavinski is the author of Lesson Plans Ahoy: Hands-On Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors.

A teacher, parent, and a lifelong sailor, she holds a Master’s of Education from Harvard University. In 2007-2008, Nadine took a year-long sabbatical on her 35-foot sloop with her husband and four-year-old son, crossing the Atlantic and cruising the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and eastern U.S. seaboard. She is the author of four books and has written for numerous publications.

Her website, www.sailkidsed.net lists many free resources for home schooling sailors.

LESSON PLANS AHOY!

Lesson Plans Ahoy! is a resource for sailors heading out on a short cruise, an ocean crossing, or a year of home schooling.

The book includes detailed instructions for six units in Science, Mathematics, the Humanities, and Physical Education; all are designed to be fun, practical, and relevant.

Lesson Plans Ahoy! is highly recommended to any parent considering cruising with school-aged children and available at major booksellers including Amazon.com.

Each unit includes information on:

- Materials required (selected for practicality on a boat)

- Age-appropriate adaptations (ages 4-12 in detail)

- Activities and assignments children will enjoy doing

- Tips for cross-curricular links and enrichment

- Suggested resources to support learning

An appendix links science and mathematics units to national and state curricula for ages 4-12 from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK so that home schooling students can keep pace with expectations in their home systems.

Read also on this website

• Nadine SLAVINSKI answers 12 questions on sailing as a family aboard NAMANI
• 12 questions to 12 sailing families
• What does it cost to cruise as a family? One family’s first-year expenses, by Meri Faulkner

More information (external links)

• Nadine’s book: Lesson Plans Ahoy (Second Edition): Hands-On Learning for Sailing Children and Home Schooling Sailors is available at Amazon.com
• Nadine’s educational website for sailing families: www.sailkidsed.net

How do you handle home schooling aboard your boat? Do you have advice or tips for other families?

Let us know.

Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

To landlubbers who are unaware of the global cruising community, the Crafton family’s circumnavigation seemed so audacious a thing to attempt, that it must be singular, so unfamiliar, it must [...]]]>

Recently, a big hubbub was made in the national news about a family of five – the Craftons – who completed a circumnavigation aboard their sailboat!

To landlubbers who are unaware of the global cruising community, the Crafton family’s circumnavigation seemed so audacious a thing to attempt, that it must be singular, so unfamiliar, it must be irresponsible.

We know it is not.

The Craftons are just one of many, many families who cruise (or have cruised) far and wide aboard their sailboat-home. Saying so takes nothing away from the Crafton’s accomplishment. Far from it.

As the Craftons state, the choice to take a family long distance cruising is rarely made to achieve a specific goal (like a circumnavigation, crossing an ocean, or setting some record… although many do), but rather to provide one’s whole family with an exceptional learning opportunity partnered with years of quality family time.

Today, as we post family #6 –sv Momo and their family of four – on womenandcruising.com, we are halfway through the mounting of our own special project on Cruising Families.

Each family is different – different boat, different starting place, different obstacles, different story, but at the same time each is alike in that they feel the decision to take their kids cruising is one of the best they have ever made.

Our contributors were given a set of questions to answer based on topics most people wonder about, such as the challenges parents faced getting going; what ages are good for taking children to sea; how they handle health, education, safety and entertainment issues; and modifications they may have made to their boat.

Plus each family paints a picture of a typical day at anchor and a typical day on passage aboard their boat, and all answers are illustrated with terrific photographs.

If you are looking for encouragement in making a similar leap of commitment, you won’t find a better resource. And there are six more families to come!

So far we have posted contributions from:

1. Patricia and Thierry Echenard and their son Martin (8) of sv New Life (Basel, Switzerland);
2. Behan and Jaimie Gifford and their three children Niall (11), Mairen (8) and Siobhan (6) of sv Totem (Eagle Harbor, USA);
3. Emmanuelle and Gregory Hall and their three children Victor (10), Felix (8) and Cléa (4) of sv Merlin (Cape Town, South Africa);
4. Pam and Andy Wall, and their two children, Samantha and Jamie, aboard sv Kandarik (Ft. Lauderdale, USA);
5. Tania Aebi and her school-break 10-month voyage with her two teenage sons Nicholas and Sam aboard sv Shangri La (Corinth, USA);
6. and Michelle Elvy and Bernard Heise and their two daughters, Lola (8) and Janna (6) aboard sv Momo, (Newport, USA)
   

Feedback from readers on the web-page presentations of their stories has been enthusiastic, eg: “What an amazing post! I can’t wait to do this with my family!”

Contributors have received comments directly to their personal blogs. Relatives back home see that their sailing grandbabies are well-adjusted, that they aren’t alone, and that there are many other families sharing this same life.

A Canadian family that is working toward going cruising as a family has extended an invitation (and the use of their washing machine!) to one of our sailing families that mentioned they are headed their way.

Plus, several of the families in the same part of the world are making plans to meet and connect up!

Who knows what all will come from these families that have so enthusiastically shared their stories and their advice!

Links to the Sailing Families project

• 12 Questions to 12 Sailing Families (all families)
• #1 – New Life
• #2 – Totem
• #3 – Merlin
• #4 – Kandarik
• #5 – Shangri La
• #6 – Momo

Links to the Crafton family news stories

• Crafton family enjoys rare closeness after 7 years at sea (Washington Post)
• Crafton family of 5 now back on land in Maryland after sailing around world for 7 years (ABC News)

Do you have feedback for our sailing families? Are you cruising as a family now – or do you plan to?

Let us know. Email kathy@forcruisers.com or leave a comment below.

We call it 12 Questions to 12 Sailing Families, and the first contribution – the story of sv New Life and the Echenard Family of three  from Switzerland — is already in place.

Rich with [...]]]> We are so excited!  A project in the making for almost a year is finally coming together!

We call it 12 Questions to 12 Sailing Families, and the first contribution – the story of sv New Life and the Echenard Family of three  from Switzerland — is already in place.

Rich with detailed information about why and how this family chose to go cruising and the rewards their choice has brought them, the story is studded with terrific photographs that will melt your heart!

Each of the 12 families answer 12 questions about the challenges of choosing this life, what they like best and least, how they handle family back home, schooling, safety, laundry, etc. Plus, they offer advice for other families pondering this life.

This was a tremendous amount of work for the participating families, canvassing opinions from each family member, collecting or taking illustrative photographs, and then arranging to email all this material to us, which as we cruisers know is not always an easy feat from out-of-the-way destinations.

The result, however, is hugely inspiring and honest and a great read for families who are considering going sailing as a family.

Unlike our previous big projects –  What I like most about cruising and the Galley articles — for which we held back and mounted all the contributions as one huge piece, we have decided for the Families project, because each story is so special, to put up one family’s story at a time and let the project build.

Each week, we will be publishing another family until we have all 12 online.

Next in line is sv Totem – an American family of  five, that we will publish July 24. We anticipate publishing family number 3, a week later on July 31.

The message these families offer is exciting. As Gwen Hamlin says:

“That the cruising dream can encompass families leaves landlubbers shaking their heads in wonder and late-in-life cruisers saying, ‘If only I’d known it could be done!’  The reality is that families from all over the world and from all economic levels choose the cruising life as a special gift to their children not just for the experience but for the quality time it gives parents and children together.’”

An early reviewer of the project, Sally Erdle of the Caribbean Compass, says that these stories are inspiring even  for cruisers without kids:

“I think ‘child-free’ people will be intrigued for sure… You can’t help but think,  if they can do it with kids, we can surely do it without them!”

The work flow on this project is sometimes mind-boggling:

In addition to the families’ efforts (and remember, for several of them, English is not their first language!), there is a tremendous amount of design, editing, coordination of photos, proofing, coding, etc.

For example, one day last week Sylvie Branton, our web designer in Grenada, posted her first draft of a French-speaking family’s material online in our “work area”. I, in a Texas  recording studio to produce a Spanish for Cruisers audio, would call Gwen (in Florida) on Skype every time we took a break in the studio. Together, we would proof and edit  the family’s page, four eyes always being better than two.

We were under some pressure because we knew the family was planning to leave Tahiti that night for Tonga and would be on passage and out of email range for several weeks. So as soon as we finished, we sent our draft back to Sylvie in Grenada, who made a few more changes and forwarded it that evening to Tahiti, (we had a little help with the time zone changes) where the family reviewed the draft, and emailed us with their feedback. Then they set sail for Tonga!

Meanwhile, since we include about 30 photos for each family’s page, Sylvie is hard at work back in Grenada laying out photos and captions and communicating via a flurry of emails between her Blackberry and our computers.

Links to the Sailing Families project

• 12 Questions to 12 Sailing Families
• New Life’s answers to 12 questions about sailing as a family

It’s been over a year and a half since we pulled out of our home port of Bainbridge Island, Washington, and headed south.

Sure, we have some challenges that [...]]]>

It’s been over a year and a half since we pulled out of our home port of Bainbridge Island, Washington, and headed south.

Going cruising as a family, instead of waiting for our children to leave the nest, is one of the best choices my husband and I have ever made.

Sure, we have some challenges that the empty nest cruisers don’t have: they probably haven’t had lego bits bind up their macerator pump, or string cheese blocking the finely machined teeth on a winch. But these are minor, and only place-shifted from the similar parenting realities we’d face on land.

Whether taking your children cruising is a long term proposition or a sabbatical year, it is a great opportunity for them to experience so much of life that their peers can only learn about second hand.

The comparatively outdoor existence of our lifestyle brings them in tune with the natural environment: tides, moon phases, animal migrations.

They have real responsibilities: not just the usual household chores, but meaningful ones that make a material difference in our lives and others. Our 10 year old can stand a day watch, and handle net control for a Mexico-wide SSB radio net. Whether looking for hazards or relaying health and welfare reports, he understands the gravity of these roles.

The children haven’t just been informed about ancient populations from books and museums, they’ve walked through middens and discovered artifacts from stone tools to arrowheads. Our son has been cataloging fish and is a virtual encyclopedia of all things fishy – an excellent snorkeling partner, as he can identify all the creatures for me!

From the outside, we’re routinely reinforced by the cruising community around us: reflections from empty nest cruisers that they wish they’d gone sooner, with children, or how lucky our children are to have this opportunity.

I have to agree with them, and wish I’d had the same chance myself.

It is an unexpected delight how our own experiences, cruising as parents, are enriched by our children. I should have remembered from my days toting a baby in a sling what great ice breakers kids can be: children are inherently more approachable and present universal common ground.

The concerns that we hear expressed by people considering cruising as a family (or those who love them!) focus on safety and education. These are valid, but surmountable.

We find that many of the concerned views are generally expressed based upon assumptions that have little basis in the reality of cruising as a family.

It’s good to worry about education in advance: we all want the best for our children.

The reality is that you don’t have to be a trained teacher for your children to have an education far beyond what their peers will experience on land. Programs and approaches for homeschooling vary widely, and a fit can be found that meets the parent’s needs for handholding.

Safety for all of us is priority number one. We have strict rules about where the children can be on the boat, and when, and they are all old enough to understand them (our youngest was four at our departure). They all have PFDs and harnesses, and know how to use them. Our boat selection was based on safety overall and with children in particular: the center cockpit puts greater distance between them and the water.

The hardest part of going cruising for me, as a mother, was making the transition from working mom to cruising mom.

My days are so dramatically different now than they were a couple of years ago. I sometimes fantasize about having my pint size crew respond to my requests the way my old project teams did! I wouldn’t trade it for the world, though. All the little complications are far exceeded by the rewards we reap by cruising as a family unit.

About Behan Gifford

Behan Gifford is cruising with her husband, Jamie, and their children Niall, Mairen and Siobhan.

Their travels began from Bainbridge Island in 2008 on their Stevens 47, Totem. They’re currently in Mexico, preparing to cross to the Pacific islands.

Follow their adventures at www.sv-totem.com.

More info

• Kids Aboard Resources (on this website)

“I would like to ask whether you could make mention, under the KIDS ABOARD section that Offshore Sailing School is offering a KIDS AND TEENS LEARN TO SAIL FREE program through October.  This gives kids a great chance [...]]]> We received this email from Mary Orme with information for families that are interested in learning to sail:

“I would like to ask whether you could make mention, under the KIDS ABOARD section that Offshore Sailing School is offering a KIDS AND TEENS LEARN TO SAIL FREE program through October.  This gives kids a great chance to learn to sail with their parents for free.”

Here’s the URL that describes the program:
http://www.offshore-sailing.com/2009_kids_learn_free.asp

As Mary suggested, we will add this to the “Kids Aboard” section of our Resources page.