Lesson Plans Ahoy! (2nd Edition, 2011)
Windcheck Magazine, January 2012
As a teacher, lifelong sailor and parent, Nadine Slavinski has written a book for parents who want to educate their children while cruising on a sailboat. The text comprises ten units including Science, Math, Writing, History, Navigation and Physical Education, each selected for practicality on a boat and relevance to shipboard life, and broken down for all ages from four to twelve. For example, students will plot their boat’s water usage on a graph and study the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook. This expanded second edition also has a section on the How-To’s of home schooling, and detailed appendices including a list of Internet links to national and state curricula you can use to check how your kids’ learning correlates to age-appropriate benchmarks in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Solo circumnavigator and home schooling parent Tania Aebi said, “Lesson Plans Ahoy! would be a great supplement to anybody who is customizing a curriculum for their children, or even as a supplement to a structured program. I am impressed with its thoroughness, and the index with all the links is very useful.”
Nadine Slavinski holds a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University. In 2007-2008, she took a year-long sailing sabbatical with her husband and four-year-old son, exploring the Mediterranean, crossing the Atlantic, cruising the Caribbean and the East Coast back to their home in Maine aboard their 35-foot sloop. Her website, which you’ll find at sites.google.com/site/sailkidsed, has a wealth of resources including home schooling tips from cruising families, recommended books for sailing children and more.
Whether you’re planning a summer cruise or an ocean crossing with your children, Lesson Plans Ahoy! will help make their onboard education more effective…and more fun. This fine book is available at Amazon.com and CreateSpace.com.
Go to the author's SailKidsEd website