Projects
Home Schooling, as we run it, invites to work in projects. Since we are not bound to a specific correspondence school, we are able to choose projects along the way. The idea is to associate the subjects with something from "real life", as we experience it while cruising.

A project, as we see it, is to interlace various subjects among one joint issue. History, science, language, maths, reading and writing can all be part of one and the same project. This is pretty much as Jessica and Jonathan have been used to working back at school as well and thus it feels natural to find projects as we sail.

Vikings

The Vikings was our first project, sailing in their wakes. We visited museums along the way and tried to find connections between the places we visited and the Vikings, trying to imagine how life would have looked like at that age. Jonathan got a small maths booklet from his school teacher where there were maths problems about Vikings ("I Vikingabyn", Almqvist&Wiksell, ISBN 91-21-14087-1). A model of a Viking Ship was built (se Art) to understand more about the ship's type. Denmark, Norway and Ireland were interesting places to visit in our search for the Vikings.
The Columbus Festival in Porto Santo was the perfect highlight in our "Columbus Project"
Columbus

From Spain on, we changed project to Columbus. A lot of history could be covered under this banner, ranging from the Portuguese controlling the African Trade, the Arabs leaving Spain, the Jewish being forced to leave Spain shortly thereafter. We tried to understand how Columbus with his self confidence was so convinced of his own ideas that he could lead others to follow him. We discussed project organization and leadership (which he was not as good as). On long passages, I read loud out of Herman Lindqvists book "Christofer Columbus" (ISBN 91-7054-677-0).

We were lucky, to visit a replica of Pinta in Bayona, Spain, and even could compare it with the replica of St Maria, which came sailing with Columbus himself on the local Columbus Festival on Porto Santo, Madeira.
The replica of Santa Maria (left) and Columbus examining the sand sculptures about himself and his life made by the boat-kids on the beach.
Maths was easily brought in when calculating on distances, time and speed to reach India or "West-India" and even art was built into this project through the Columbus festival. The children participated on a sand sculpture competition about Columbus as well as painting a wall to honor Columbus, who had lived on Porto Santo. Of course, his house was visited, now turned into a small museum.
Volcanoes

Volcanoes have also turned into a small project with the children showing great interest in the subject. Porto Santo on Madeira was their first visit to a "real" volcano, although extinguished. Our next volcano will be Lanzarote, which actually still is hot and it is said that you can cook meals on the hot stones on top of the volcano.
A volcano on Porto Santo as taken from a fairy tale!