Sandwiched Club

The year-end holidays have passed but the lessons from those weeks (5 weeks to be exact) have stayed with me. Master Focaccia and his little sister, Miss Cheesy made me, Mrs Bacon, promised not to have ANY classes during the holidays. They wanted no classes, no plans. So with that, I had to come up with a way to make life meaningful still, especially for an ADHD kid in Singapore, and his sibling.

Here’s what worked:

1. No screens without exercise – I made it a point daily that the kids had to exercise to get screen time. And screen time would only happen in the late afternoon. So daily, the kids had to go for runs, swim or practice squash. They had to do it for at least 30 to 45 mins a day. And that, they did. Almost every afternoon, they would be out doing something like that, clocking hours outside to get their precious 30 mins of screen daily.
2. Cycle EVERYWHERE! – The next thing I did was get the kids into cycling…A LOT OF CYCLING. We would go everywhere on our bicycles during the holidays. For breakfast in the morning, we would cycle out to food courts and coffee shops. For lunch, we would cycle to the mall that was about 20 mins away and also visit the library. There were also the times we would cycle in the evenings from their grandma’s house back home. They enjoyed these the most. They felt the wind in their hair, the speed and the feeling of freedom that came with being on 2 wheels.
3. Microscope fun! – My hubby got a little microscope for the kids and so I got them to go collect specimens around our condominium and check how it looked up close. It was fun for them. They collected everything from rocks to leaves and dead insects (live ones would have been a problem…)
4. Playdates…Kids in the condo organize time for each other and Master Focaccia, being quite popular, was invited to many of these, to the dismay of Miss Cheesy who wanted to spend time with her brother. He had quite a bit of fun.

It was a lovely holiday. Master Foccacia came away from December missing it and loving it. He wanted to cycle more and do more things together. It was also when I realized perhaps my children were most at peace when outdoors and when learning was unstructured. They needed that freedom and craved that the new independence they got from learning on the go.

And with that, everything changed.

Will share more with you on the transition back to school life in the next share.