The start of the summer holidays

The end of term felt like a bit of anti-climax this year. Normally I'm desperate for the holidays to start, but although Harry was at school part-time for the last few weeks of term it still felt like a bit of a novelty with a traffic-free school run, no uniform to wash and no extra homework.

I do feel for Harry, he has missed out on a huge number of Year 6 milestones - among other things his first residential, a day trip to the Isle of Wight, a talent show and leavers disco. But at least he was able to catch up with friends for a few weeks, poor Mia had a one hour transition session with her class last week but apart from that she has hardly seen anyone else since March.

We were very lucky with the remote learning provision from the school, and the children definitely benefited from the routine that gave us. They were up and dressed by 8.30am each day to respond to a morning message, and then had regular morning Teams calls with their classes. I'm very keen to keep a little bit of that routine going over the summer.

I'm intending to get them to spend a few minutes each day using the Times Tables Rockstars app. I also discovered the Quizlet app while doing their French remote learning and it's brilliant. I'm getting them to spend some time daily going through some of the vocab that they were introduced to this term. The other thing I'm keen on is reading, but luckily I don't need to force them to do that!

I'm also trying for some daily exercise, even if it's just a scoot around the block, and some form of shared creative time. This week it's been all about the play dough! I nearly decluttered it all a few months back thinking that they were too old for it, but it has kept them (and me!) happily occupied for ages, and I'm even wondering if I need to buy some more!

We are still trying to stay at home as much as possible, and there are many weeks stretching ahead of us without the usual places to visit or playdates with friends. Luckily we've managed to book a week away -  even if we can't get out and about on holiday as much as normal at least we'll have a change of scenery. And we will have a few meet ups with friends and family in gardens and down the beach. 

Fingers crossed we will be back to some sort of normality with back to school in September, I think that we will all be ready for it!