Yes, the kids have school, and yes, Chris has to work. BUT and this is the fun part, after all of that we still have an entire afternoon of summer, sun & beach up oursleves. It amazes me that we can take a 5-minute walk and end up laying in the sun like it’d be in mid-July instead of the end of October. Again – why haven’t we started doing this years ago?
Another thing I’ve noticed this week – somewhere between a “soak-up-the-sun-at-the-beach-day” and another museum or city night – is, that I haven’t heard the sentence “I am bored”. Not even once. At home, where they have an entire room filled to the ceiling – and I mean this quite literally – with toys we’ve accumulated over the last decade or so, it’s a sentence I hear a lot. “I’m bored”. Here they have nothing more than a single box filled with a handful of barbies and toy cars. That’s it. And it’s been used like once on a rainy day. Know what they play with now? Stones and sticks on the beach, the sand, and castle walls (some are excellent for climbing on 🙂 ). They enjoy just swimming in the waves during the afternoon and learning about things when we go into the city at night. Just the other night we went to a museum in Krk. An old man showed us his very own collection of handmade wooden boats and ships, old logbooks, and machines – we even found some Cunard tickets and menu cards from 1911 (we are going to travel with Cunard ourselves fairly soon). Since there are no tourists around anymore, we were the only ones in and the kids asked questions for over an hour that he gladly and patiently answered. Their days are so fun, being bored is the last thing on their minds. It’s amazing what a little sand, rocks, and ocean waves can accomplish.
Something else that is amazing to see is how they are starting to treat each other. Now, our kids have always been very good with each other. They have been raised to appreciate their siblings. But of course being in different classes, not seeing each other half the day due to school, and spending the rest of the day with homework, there simply wasn’t that much time to play with each other anymore. Now they have that kind of time back. Lots of schoolwork in the morning is done in groups – as I am writing this they are working on biology together (btw. this is also stunning to see, everyone has a different kind of input and it all comes together so nicely). Their school day ends between noon and 1 pm and after that, they have time to play together. You wouldn’t believe the kind of imagination, friendship, laughter, and sandcastle structures we have seen!
So all in all, this week of homeschooling has been another success. We are still loving it. And now I am bout to wrap this up and head to the beach. Because, you know, it’s only the end of October 🙂
The boss, the general, and the brains of the operation. Anya is the mom of this crazy group of misfits. When not traveling the world and teaching her kids to be decent human-beings, she likes to bake, sing, be goofy. Aside from all that she does for Five of a Kind, she is also a short term foster mother for infants in need.
She also enjoys unreasonably spicy foods and is searching for a hot sauce that is spicy enough and yet still has some kind of flavor to it.
