A fresh start

We’re more than one week into term three! After the busyness and messiness of term one and two, it has felt great to make a fresh start with term three. It feels like a blank slate, enabling us to restart and return to some good routines.

Checklists

First priority for me was to return to using weekly checklists for each child. These unfortunately went by the wayside in the second half of last term thanks to our house move. I find it so helpful to have a set list of things they can each work their way through, and therefore at least partly manage themselves.

Mornings

While things like clothes washing and dealing with my one year old still cause interruptions, I am attempting to keep the morning free for just schoolwork. As in, me being both mentally and physically present, rather than getting distracted by all the other odd jobs that need doing.

New topics

Another positive is the opportunity to pick fresh topics to study, and set aside time to do the (what I consider) extras, the fun parts such as art and science experiments. The craziness of last term meant we really just focused on getting the essentials done, the bare minimum. I was actually fairly impressed with how much Maths and writing the kids did last term without my close supervision!

Activities

It’s exciting to have some activities starting up again this week too. We’re doing folk dancing for the first time, and resuming swimming which has been on hold since late in term one due to the coronavirus.

While there have already been plenty of hiccups and frustrating moments – not to mention uncooperative children at times – I’m still feeling pretty optimistic about term three and fairly enthusiastic about all the anticipated learning!