June 2022 Highlights

- June 28, 2022

I love summer! The long days, a bit of heat... wait, heat? I live in hope, as so far there's been about two warm days total. Mostly disappointment. But thankfully, Vienna is coming next month!

Meanwhile, what did we get up to this month?

The Bath & West Show

That was fun, the kids got to meet horses and sheep and watch sheep shearing competitions with the occasional escapee sheep. There were tractors to sit on and an "Imagineering" Tent where they found lots of fascinating activities, and they also enjoyed watching Morris Dancers.

Fun & Creativity at home

Things you can do with a hairdryer, an acrylic painting and lots of books written - taking inspiration from Captain Underpants for this one...

N(7)'s creation

Nature on our Doorstep

Since we'll be saying goodbye to our home of five years soon, and there are so many fond memories of the nature reserve near our house - our regular, almost daily walk during lockdown to visit the tadpoles and see them grow - we made sure to spend a bit of time there as soon as it was dry enough to not lose our wellies in the mud.

Forest Child

No tadpoles this time but lots of water runners, dragonflies & newts too

Visiting the Middle Ages

There was a Mediaeval Festival near us and we decided to go check it out, so much fun! The kids had opportunity to joust (on hobbyhorses, using baguettes!)

Visiting St Fagan's in Wales

This is the most amazing place. And it was hot that day! It's a big park where you can walk around and into buildings throughout Welsh history, which they've taken brick by brick from all over Wales! We went with a group of home educating friends and it was the best time.

A personal highlight for me: When D(6) walked on with a friend his own age, not realising that the group had turned off into a building - and we didn't realise it either - he found himself lost with this little friend who was frightened and distraught, D took charge and found a lovely older lady and asked her to call my phone. Since he always wears my phone number around his wrist, and I often tell him what to do in that case, he knew what he needed to do and did it. I was so proud of him, how he kept his head!

The yearly Camp

This is a yearly fixture in our calendar, together with a group of local home edders - we've gone every year since my kids were toddlers. This group has been around for about 15 years! And since we always knew we'd home ed our kids, we plugged in to that group as soon as we possibly could, long before the kids were school age.

This yearly camp is already full of memories. The time when it was miserably cold and the D(then 2) was potty training and had an accident in the middle of the night - co-sleeping with me - so I had to clean it all up in the dark and cold, and how miserable that was. Or the time that my toddler kids saw the teenagers do gymnastics tricks on a mat they had brought and wanted to take part, and were welcomed to... and the next morning, one of my kids toddled about outside the tent while I was inside and I heard a teenager walk by, saying: "Morning D, how's it going?" and how much that meant to me, that he was being welcomed and treated as his own person by others (not just an extension of me).

This time it wasn't as rustic as previous trips because we now have Tilly the Campervan with all the mod cons (which we rent out as a business, but can use for ourselves too!) - timed heating for the win! - but again the kids had the best time. Literally from first thing in the morning to the time it got too dark to see anything (10pm) we hardly saw them except for feeding.