Calverts Boat Home Schooling Curriculum

KJ, the eldest of our 2 daughters, will be 5 when we set sail, and in the fall of 2011 she will need to be enrolled in kindergarten. Since we will be voyaging around the world at that time, how do we handle her formal eduction? We've elected to home/boat school her. In the boatschooling world, the most well known system is Calverts.

Calverts provides a fantastic eduction for those on the road all the way up to 8th grade. The system is designed for people who don't have immediate access to the Internet, and for people whom want to teach the learning approach of self paced/self taught learning. Interestingly, if you review all their materials carefully, you see that everything a child would need to pass the GED is taught to them by the 8th grade. At this time, you can't take the GED until you're 16, but it is nice knowing that the material will be in KJ (and Dy's) head. Thousands and thousands of children have followed the program successfully and gone on to college. KJ and Dy may just join their ranks.

We have a number of options after the 8th grade too, like enrolling them in universities that allow for remote education, such as Brigham Young University and the University Nebraska (these 2 schools are favorites of those roaming the world). Will we do that? We won't know until KJ is older. Our immediate issue is, however, kindergarten.

The cost of the kindergarten package, new, from Calvert is $585, a value in our opinion. However, we bought a Calvert kindergarten package from a seller on eBay for $98!

With Dy being only 2 years behind KJ, Dy should be able to reuse the material without an issue. We suspect that KJ's learning sessions will naturally spill over into Dy's consciousness anyway. The boat is only so big, plus Dy is always curious about what her sister is doing.

This is a most excellent way for us to dip our toe into the water of boat schooling. We're glad to have found this system, and to have purchased it cheaply.