It has been quite a time these past two months at home. Frankly, most of the time has been spent prepping for the new chapter in L’s life: Primary School. Eeek! I know right? My child is going to ‘big school’ and I am freaking out just a tad. He, on the other hand is excited. OK, OK. I am not TOTALLY freaking out. At least, not for him to see (haha). I have been pushing a couple things these holidays to prep him and myself for the new season of his life. I also accepted fate and realised that some times you have to admit your humanness. We had great plans at the start, I wanted to send him to camp for a moment but that did not come through. First of all, vacation camps are super expensive and the worthwhile ones are few and far between. So we did a mixture of fun things and necessary things.
We did a learning schedule. Confession: L had fallen off of reading and writing a lot since the last update, due to a number of things: every time I said it was reading time or writing time he would whine until kingdom come. I (honestly) wanted to tell him suck it up and just get it over with so he could go back to playing, but I did what the ‘experts’ online say to do and I allowed him to slack off. The ‘experts’ all spoke about how we shouldn’t push them when they complained because then it would only serve to demonize the ‘thing’ we were trying to teach them. Well, experts, you can kiss my ass because your advice sucks! Yea, I said it. Sucks. Here’s why: I felt as if giving in to the advice caused L to fall way behind where he would have been. So we made a schedule and I explained to him what we were going to do. It was not going to be school, but it was a way to prep him for school so he would not feel as if he was so far behind everyone else. ‘Work’ was for about 10-20 mins a day and included practicing letter formation, reading two lines in a story book, learning sight words, colouring, drawing, craft and even some simple math. He rarely complained this time around, but even when he did, I reminded him how short it was and he could get right back to playing.
I spent the gabizillion dollars I earned on school supplies. Good God almighty, why does it cost so much to educate the little people? From shoes, to books, to uniforms. Sigh!!! But I managed to get everything and papered all his books (I love this part, at least). Devised a plan to get around ironing (the dryer will do my bidding muhahahahha! Yes, I am that lazy and I HATE ironing).
TV and tablets and screens, Oh My! Yes, for many a day I allowed the screens to parent for me (no shame in my game). I frankly needed the moments to breathe and hear myself think. However, L did not go into complete zombie mode (which is a good thing overall I think), but he did give me some free time to work or just gaze for a minute. I think that is OK. Screen time is not a demon and I admit I am a screen-loving mommy.
Family time still in effect. Even with all the important and necessary stuff we still managed to get some family time stuff going. We did our stilt walking, we went to our national museum, we went to the library, we had impromptu playdates. While we did not do as many things as L would have liked us to do, we still managed to get those smiles in and encourage the necessary connection.
In any case, we have two more days until school. The official last weekend and I don’t know what we are going to do but, I hope to keep him excited for this new chapter and new journey. Pray that this period will be a great one!
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