So all my kids were up at 6am, nothing unusual there, but I was having a hard time convincing myself to get out of bed. Two morning coffee kickstarters, make the kids their breakfast, and encourage them to get dressed and brush their teeth. “Right kids lets discuss what’s going on and how we are going to do this”.

We write a list of activities for the day.

Ok, let’s start day with social skills and our social contact. Onto messenger to video call Mamar (my mum). We all wave high and outline what we are doing today. No screenshot of Mamar, she was in her dressing gown still (you can thank me later mum 🤪).

We move on to “quiz Jenga” I prepared last night. The boys give me a bit of lip and attitude so I lay down the law, I will not be overruled by them haha. Apparently I’m over confident with my preparation and quiz Jenga reverts back to regular Jenga but with the addition of a “my turn” header toy to help Zara visualise when it’s her turn and when to wait.

All is going reasonably well and we get two games finished. Attention span limit is reached and all three kids then start to build with the blocks. Let’s see where this goes. Jenga has now become constructions, marble runs to be exact. Funny that there are marbles on the floor (yep I struggle to get them to regularly clean up). It breaks down into an argument with the boys over how to do the best race, so I pull teacher rank (apparently that’s higher ranking than mum) and tell them this is teamwork and they have to solve the problem. Clancy gives me attitude, I pull rank again, and Angus smiles and says “we need to take turns”. Hurray I have him on side and Clancy falls into line, all the while Zara has create her own structure and is happily running her marble. Attention is starting to lapse it’s time for a coffee break and free time.

We’re off again. We put on shoes, grab a shoebox each and head outside to collect things in nature we find interesting.

This exercise fast turns it “I got more than you” competition with the boys, Zara again going about her business happily not competing. We come to a track in the paddock and Angus asks if we can play tag. WOOHOO they are coming up with activities without me having to try. Clancy is still catching up as he is still collecting, so Angus, Zara and I start playing tag, what fun. Clancy finally catches up and asks if we can have some running races, more woohoo from me. Running races produces the predicted results, Angus is my sporting child and wins the races, followed by Clancy, then Zara.

We walk on and we spot numerous butterflies. I’m now literally like a child following them trying to take a photo but they are very flighty. Clancy tells me what the name of them is, apparently he remembers talking about butterflies in year one.

We head home for lunch where we plan for a teddy bear picnic. Flies are bad outside so we decide the lounge room floor. We discuss what we need for our picnic, make a list, and then designate jobs. With full bellies we take another break after packing up the picnic.

While everyone is taking a break I happily sit with a coffee checking out Facebook and thinking about our last activity, story time. When BAM, there’s a post on Facebook from school. One of the fabulous teachers has uploaded a video of her reading a book “The very cranky bear”….WOOHOO I’m off the hook for reading today, I actually love reading to my kids but today I’m exhausted.

Well we made it through day one, nobody cried, nobody lost a leg….I’m calling it a win. I actually had a lovely time with them but I’m knackered.

See you tomorrow.

“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” – B.B. King