School holidays - off to an interesting start!

Day 1 of the school holidays was a mixed bag of crazy.  With both adults and the eldest child feeling very under the weather and out of sorts, the chance of a significant clash with 2 energetic smaller folk was pretty high.  

This is how we ended up in the car going on a "penny hike" which took us to a lovely creekside viewing platform where the three children all delighted in playing counting and running games with the wooden logs. Happy parent!

These holidays I've decided to focus on sight words for my boy, he is really 'getting' reading now, but totally missed learning those strange words like 'have" 'the' and 'you' etc. It makes reading that much slower than it needs to be. I've written the first 3 words in glass marking pens on our back door so he gets to read them every time he goes out to play!

We also did a science experiment last night, an amazingly short one, but they all delighted nonetheless in the occasional spillage of water on the dining room floor!  It is funny how the simplest things are awesome to a smaller person, everyone from the 2 year old to the 9 year old had a good time tipping up their water glass and trying not to break the seal with the cardboard.

I love school holidays because there is so much more time for reading. We've read 4 books already in 2 days (I'm counting Friday as everyone was home sick). One of our favourites that still requires me to read aloud is Mr Chicken Goes to Paris. It is especially funny when we have our French backpackers staying with us.

I'm especially proud of the learning my eldest is doing. She's constructed a cubbyhouse in our mango tree, that even includes a rope pulley system for getting items up into the tree and down again. A very good thing that years ago when installing our pool I didn't let anyone cut down the lower branches of our young tree, so that it had the chance to grow into a perfect climbing tree for our girl and her independent exploration.

There's nothing more enjoyable than being a part of the children's lives and education, I am such a homeschooler at heart, these school holidays for me are always a precious opportunity to grab a moment and spend time with the children that doesn't seem to be possible when they are at school.  The temptation to get on the road and just travel around while they are so small is very strong!