Start to Mid June 2020

I have no idea where time goes but here we are in the middle of June. Lucky's Year 6 group is going back next week and I'm still not sending her in.

So what has happened in our lives now?

Our entertainment involved the following:

1. Building an outdoor den which is used as a chillout one for the kids to read and draw.

2. We made an adventure play area inside. We made a big inside den and made a maze out of ribbon so the kids had to go through ribbons to escape the horrors of a jungle. This kept the kids busy and active the whole afternoon/evening and I didn't even see the time pass. I was the danger creator so was making their stay in 'the jungle' more dangerous by throwing water, having snakes roaming around and throwing obstacles at them. It was a tough journey to survive for the kids.

3. The kids had their first playdate with her neighbour where they went to the park. Thye were overjoyed by this.

4. More dance battles which I obviously won.

5. We also made lots of animation videos using Lucky's animation kit. Since it was D-DAY.  the kids animated their own version of D-DAY by using Disney Princesses dolls we had.  Lucky was the doctor while me and Mahi were the actors. 

6. We also made squishies and stress balls. All we needed was cornflour, balloons and water.

7. We visited the maternal grandparents for the first time since the lockdown.
8. We tried pendulum painting but it has failed miserably. We tried with a cardboard and the flow of the paint wasn’t enough to create a painting. We’ll be trying again with LEGO. Wish ya luck!

In our homeschooling curriculum, we made it very topical with everything going on:

1. D-Day - we learnt about the important of the date and like i said above we made an animation video. We used this day to also learn about Winston Churchill and France as a country and it's features.

2.  UK - I thought this will be a pretty good time to learn all about the UK and its countries. The kids were also asked to write  list of places they wanted to visit when we travel to the countries.

6. #BlackLivesMatter - With the murder of George Floyd and all the protests happening, we learnt about systematic racism and police brutality including the Stephen Lawrence, Sarah Reed amd Shukri Abdi cases. We are also learning about important  black activists that stood against anti-racism. We are reacting speeches from Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The kids had a lot of questions which lead to an hour discussion about how they be better human beings and how to deal with these issues if they come across such a situation. This is why I love homeschooling. Because you can teach things that schools won't teach but it is vital to our growth and thinking.

I hope you are keeping well and safe.

To send or not to send them back to school?

It was announced that kids is reception, year 1 and year 6 will go back to school this week.

Our school was meant to reopen on Tuesday but there were not ready so they are opening next week. Mahi doesn't fall in the year groups but Lucky is. Her start date is 22.6.2020 with half of the year group in the class for a week only.  I have come to the conclusion, as the situation stands, not to see Lucky in.

With the lockdown eased off now, I'm worried about a second wave especially with the number of deaths still so high compared to the rest of Europe. I also don't know how they are going to teach social distancing with reception and year 1. It is Lucky's last year in primary school and she is desperate to see her teachers and friends but for just a week and half of her class, is this worth it? They definetely won't be learning anything but it'll do good for Lucky to get out and see her friends. The other thing will be that drop in times will be 10am which is inconvenient for us to drop her.

I'm still in 2 minds. I'll see how the situation gets in 3 weeks time and decide. She won't get a graduation, activity week and trips or a final year party and this is not the way I wanted her to finish her primary school. Given the circumstances, will letting her go even for a week to say goodbye, be bad?

Confusion all around.

Week number???? (Mid May to June)

I've lost count of week numbers so I have decided to just name the month.  

Since, I last wrote, there was another birthday in lockdown and we are trying to create a new normal with all these government announcements.

We have upgraded to to long walks and during the bank holiday weekend, did such big walks ending up a few towns away and my son nearly disowning me but I love those walks! It helps us discover the area but gives us so much time to talk about everything and anything. The weather has been lush and discovered some hidden gems in our area and neighbouring areas.

We've had our first McDonald's a few days ago. Yes, it deserves a special place in my blog and a dedicated paragraph. The smell and texture. Oh God, it was such a beautiful moment where we spent a few seconds just admiring our burgers. It was so delicious too after so many months.

In terms of studying, our special topics were to learn about the North Sri Lankan history and learning about key freedom fighters and our national heroes. It was quite nice to see how much my kids have taught me about events and people I didn't know. Don't you love when your kids teach you things? They even wrote in Tamil or tried to. It was so sweet! Mahi has started his art class over zoom too which is missed enormously. The school has also made arrangements for children to see their teachers. Mahi had his tongue tied as it has been so  long since he's seen his teacher but it was so nice to see his teacher and just touch base.

On the entertainment side, we are trying to learn to ride a bike without stabilisers. We had our own adventure land including a laser beam maze. Lucky had her birthday party which was a nice day actually. I invited all her friends over zoom and did plenty of games over it such as dumb charades with books and movies and pictionary. This took place over a whole afternoon but it was such a sweet moment to know that her friends made the effort to also make Lucky's day special. The kids are killing their plants through lack of care. We are still building our library.It is so intricate. We made Lego Ninjago viewfinders and did a story with it. It only works in the dark. All we need to make a viewfinder was cling film, toilet paper roll, a torchlight and drawing characters. 

In therms of me, I started to document all the books I wrote which is a nice little project and see how much I read. I also made more earrings. That's all I had time to do over the last few weeks.

Stay safe