Holiday highlights

I am greeted with "Is anything planned" by B at the end of every school day. So school holidays offer me a task to keep my busy boy occupied. He is thriving in the structure, challenge and occupation of school. His misbehavior during past school holidays seems to me to indicate that he 'wants' in the loose freedom of long uneventful days.

This distresses me somewhat as I would like him to enjoy the routine-less days and creatively occupy himself with his own imagination. And to a certain extend he will do this, inventing new machines, building with recycling, drawing hundreds of drawings to work out how a steering wheel turns wheels or playing schools or other role playing games with Little Miss. These activities are all really great...

But as he naturally tends to turn to me as his teacher mother for the next topic of exploration, I thought I would take the pressure of us both by actually planning some outings these school holidays. So we have been busy, but we have had so much fun.

Firstly we looked down exploring fossils and dinosaurs at the South Australian Museum's school holiday program. We searched for bones and fossils in special pits. Did fossil rubbings, made a dinosaur mobile, put together puzzles and played with clay.

Another day we turned our gaze up  at the University of South Australia's Planetarium learning about star formations visible at this time of year and viewing a 360degree movie about what it takes to be an astronaut. The scorpion is in the southern hemisphere's sky right now and the Planets are starting to line up this month.

Then we were challenged by reality altogether as we went to see Patricia Piccinin's exhibition Once upon a time.... at the Art Gallery of South Australia. This was a little bit scary as we saw life like sculptures of people and fantastical creatures interacting together. Little Miss really liked all the small baby like creatures and B got confused by the boys who were his height playing a DS and he didnt like all the exposed bottom parts.

It was B and Little Miss's turn to make their own kind of creature at a local library when they attended a craft session there. They were to decorate a chicken Easter basket, and unfortunately the art exhibition did not influence them, as chicken Easter baskets we got.

A wonderful Auntie Easter bunny offered up an extravagant countryside egg hunt with clues or guide strings providing a years worth of bribery material chocolate that exhausted B and Little Miss for a few minutes. We had a wonderful family Easter gathering on a beautiful warm day, made all the more special as two babysitters teenagers played for hours with B and Little Miss.





B and Little Miss's Dad took a few days off work after the Easter break and we went on a very long car trip to spend a few days in the seaside town of Robe. We stayed right on the beach. The sand offered up all kinds of entertainment.


Kangaroo

Seagull

Little Miss

Robe is a stunningly beautiful place and we all had a wonderful break away.

At home we also took a short train trip.

Short though it was, this train trip bought back many memories of traveling around on trains. I had some very odd sensations remembering being so young and free on the train, and especially catching the train with my Mum. Now jolt to the present, I'm feeling the responsibility of children and I am being the Mum. Life really is a journey of circles. I think from now on I will start to feel old, as I have vivid memories of my Mum at my age, it feels so poignant yet reassuring to become my Mum. And I miss her so very very much.