Long holiday aboard

26th May

Today I made the first purchase of few subjects from the Love2Learn home schooling programme. I decided I would order a few of the course syllabus’ immediately so that I can get a feel for how the system works, what exactly is supplied, how much extra research I (as the teacher) will have to do and how the kids will take to the new schooling system.


Once I have a feeling and am sure about the system I will order the balance of the material. I have ordered subject matter at a few different levels (called Cores) to help me make the decision as to what level each of the kids should enter at. According to this system you can teach more than 1 age group using the same course material and I am interested to see if the level will work for both of my kids, considering they are 3½ years apart. Should the age difference or learning level be too great I will have to order 2 different sets of course material.

The order can take up to 7 weeks to process as many of the books are imported, in the mean time, I will receive an “email syllabus” different from the bought one but designed to get the kids started on the road towards the change from the normal schooling programme to home schooling. This will be interesting to see as well.

We also decided to renew our subscription to SA Sailing magazine. We were in two minds about this as we plan to move aboard between December and June next year, not to mention that magazines have a cost attached, but after much discussion we decided that if we did not subscribe we would end up in C.N.A. every month looking for the latest issue and the information gained from keeping up with the sailing industry is invaluable. We get a large discount of 25% off by subscribing and as the price is set to increase on the 1st of June we saved a further R30 (more than the cost of months magazine) by signing up today. Great saving! When we move we will reroute the magazine to the ZYC and receive it there.

I am also very busy at work at the moment. We plan on taking 4 weeks off over the next 6 weeks to spend it on Yrumoar. This essentially means that I have to complete all my work over the next 2 weeks before we leave, we are away for 3 weeks, return for 1 week and then go away for 1 week again. I still need to ensure that all the bills are paid, all the salaries are paid, all the invoices are made, sent out and paid so everything can run smoothly while we are away.

Why are we going away for such a prolonged period of time? We have been given a very long school holiday by the government to facilitate the FIFA World Cup that is being played in South Africa in June/July 2010. In order to do this we have also had to shorten our other school holidays so it seemed the perfect opportunity to get away and enjoy the holiday in the relative warmth of KwaZulu-Natal rather than the freezing highveld where we stay (It is winter here in “sunny SA”). The kids will have more to do and we will get to spend some quality time together getting to know Yrumoar better.

Hopefully I will also get the time to get the “Buy Barry a local food” video set up on our website as well a few other plans and ideas we have in mind. Big changes to our website design, layout and functionality are coming soon!