Well, that’s the first week of home-schooling under our belts. It wasn’t quite the start to 2021 that I hoped. But you have to adapt and crack on! We have the builders back too. Our landing ceiling has been boarded to make it safer and both our landing and hallway are getting plastered. So, our house is a little upside down all over again.

It’s very noisy in the day with drilling and hammering combined with the boys grumbling about learning and the dog barking non-stop! She is much more animated when there are extra people in the house. Plus, there is a thick layer of dust over everything, which returns quicker than I can clean it. I was ready for the weekend I can tell you…

What did cheer me up was writing my post about Our Favourite Moments In 2020. I think I needed that lift of remembering how 2020 wasn’t all that bad after all. Maybe 2021 will surprise me, I guess we will just have to take it a day at a time.

So, what did we get up to this week? I would love to say we had a few outdoors adventures, but we seem quite tied to the house with the renovation work and being back to home-schooling.  It is nice seeing the place take shape though and the boys managed to hand their work in on time. So, I will take that as my wins for the week. Although I really do hope that the vaccines will get the country back up and running again soon. I think we are all missing so much!

Takeout

We celebrated reaching the end of week one home-schooling with a gorgeous takeout. We had pulled pork and cheese and bacon mini burgers and a chicken platter with sweet potato fries and chips. It all tasted amazing. It did us good, I think we are going to have to look for different little treats like this to keep the boys focused. Morale is definitely dipping now we are experiencing lockdown round 3. I didn’t manage to get a very good picture of the food as everyone was too impatient to get stuck in.

Crystal Art Lion

My mum bought this for my youngest son last Christmas. He had managed to make a token effort starting, adding a few crystals here and there. But after little crystals were spilling all over his desk, I decided 12 months was long enough. With his permission I finished the kit and ordered him a frame. Soon he can add it to his lion picture collection on his wall. It was actually quite relaxing working on this, but I am relieved its finished. I don’t get a huge amount of free time and when I do, I think just chilling with Netflix might be my preferred option! Who’s with me?

LEGO Dinosaurs

My eldest finished the LEGO dinosaur fossils set he had for Christmas. Mainly free time is gaming so it was nice he completed an activity that didn’t involve screens for a change. Especially as home-schooling is so reliant on computers anyway! It was the LEGO Ideas range (16+) model number 21320 if you like the look of it. You also had a Triceratops and Pteranodon to build and a Paleontologist minifigure.

Floating Egg Experiment

My eldest did a science experiment as part of his home-schooling. You just need an egg, salt, and a glass of water. An egg sinks to the bottom in plain water, but when you add plenty of salt it floats. He learnt about density. With salt the water becomes denser than the egg.

The fresher the egg the more salt you might need to use. However, he also learnt that a rotten egg floats on its own because of the build-up of air in the egg as it ages.

Fishing

My husband took our eldest our fishing. They didn’t manage to catch anything but that didn’t seem to dampen the enjoyment of the activity. My husband is hopeful they will have more luck when the weather improves. Fish move further away from the shore in colder temperatures, so it gets a bit harder.

Let’s hope next week I get outdoors a bit more, staying active is so important for family health in lockdown.