Large boy and a rainbow
Children, Crafts, Family, Food, Games, Reading

Lockdown half term

Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

I love using my blog as a bit of a diary. I documented our 2019 summer holiday, the weekly churn of the first lockdown and our 2020 summer roadtrip.

So this half term holiday has been a bit odd. Usually, at February half term, the boys would be in a holiday club somewhere. Usually, as the end of the holiday year approaches, I don’t have enough days allowance to take the whole week off. Usually, himself and I might take a day to spend having a treat adventure somewhere. Otherwise, himself buys extra days and he might usually spend the week with the boys while I work through.

This February, something different has been going on. I’m not sure how but I have loads of days holiday leftover and it’s a use it or lose it situation before the end of March. So there we were, me and the boys on holiday from work and school while himself worked through (well he took Friday off). On top of that of course we can’t go anywhere, see anyone or do anything.

This is now our sixth school holiday since COVID came into our lives, our sixth break from school with us all in the house. Back in the before times the boys would always always have been in nursery or in a holiday club or even staying with grandparents. We’ve all got used to school holidays at home, the boys staying busy and quiet (above all quiet) while some combination of their parents work. We may never send them to holiday clubs again. Or maybe they’ll be back there in a flash once it’s all safe again, enjoying varied activities and seeing other children, running around and being noisy.

This February we made our own fun and let himself work in peace.

Baking

The boys’ school is running a bake off style competition over halfterm. So large boy got straight in there on the first day with an amazing lemon curd layer cake.

He was given Delia’s Cakes for Christmas by my parents, after spending swathes of time at their house in August poring over the pages. He read all the recipes and provided running commentary of who in our family would like which cakes. When school sent out a flyer by email announcing the Great Virtual Bake Off, he was immediately determined to enter – but which cake to bake?

Coffee and walnut? No because he doesn’t like nuts.

Cup cakes? A bit simple for a baking competition?

Fruit cake? Yeah, no way.

Eventually, the lemon curd layer cake was settled one, we bought new tins especially and my shopping list swelled with ingredients.

I won’t pretend that I left him in the kitchen unattended, but he did all the weighing and mixing and read the recipe by himself. The sponges went in the oven, weighed to be the same quantity and he started the lemon curd. Then he got bored and distracted by small boy watching TV so I was left stirring the lemon curd mixture for half an hour. Worth it though! I sliced the two sponges in half to make the four layers but that was the extent of my involvement. Large boy turned out to be meticulous over spreading the whipped cream icing.

Not to be outdone, small boy got his bake on and we made some flapjack too.

Building a race track

It wouldn’t be a school holiday in this house without the Scalextric going up. The boys got their own basic track for Christmas in 2020, so they put it up themselves and built a grandstand along with some various other support services. These included an aquarium (classic motors racing-related activity right?), a transporter carrying lions, and a farm supplying the race track fast food stands with fresh cows and pigs.

Oh and a mountain top zebra pen, possibly related to the next activity…

Animal spotting

My old boss, who left my company at the start of September, had sent me a link to a wild animal spotting initiative called Zooinverse. Until now this was categorised in my head as one of the things I don’t have time for and I hadn’t even looked at it. In retrospect, this was a foolish pre-judgement as the boys love it. They spent at least an hour, maybe two, each day on several of the projects – finding and tagging fish was quite calm, but the definite favourtie was Snapshot Grumeti.

Identifying all sorts of wild animals, including lions, giraffe, elephants, bustard, zebra, and baboons is apparently very absorbing. Figuring out how many water buffalo there are by counting legs or telling the difference between zebra’s tails, legs and rather extended penis was a whole other conversation!

Long walks

We made sure we had a decent walk, at least 3km, every day. We did our usual loop round the local nature trail, took a different route looping round one of my running circuits, dropped in to see the progress of a new park, visited our rock snake and gave it a good tidy, spotted a beautiful rainbow.

Painting Rocks

Oh we do love painting rocks (and more rocks) and hiding them. We always take some with us when we go away on hoilday – though sadly we’ve never seen anything from anyone having found them. Having tidied our snake we set about re-painting some of the sad rocks we’d rescued after they’d lost any previous designs. We got the paints out and splashed it about (the kitchen table bears a slight green tinge where large boy sits, oops) then lacquered them as usual. Quite a good set I think.

Bird head by me, inverted “NHS rule” and taco by large boy, stripes by small boy.

GoogleMaps

Over the weekend at the beginning of half term, large boy announced that he wanted to find a better Chinese take away for our weekly treat. He decided to use GoogleMaps to look up local contenders, he decided on the best looking one and announced its name – only to find its the one we use already. However, in this process he discovered street view mode. After a day of looking at our house, the route we can walk to school, and his grandparents’ houses, he had the brainwave of visiting famous landmarks.

He found a list of the world’s 150 most famous landmarks and set about visiting them all. The Eifel Tower, Mount Rushmore, Buckingham Palace, Old Trafford, Yellowstone and many other locations are now on his list of places he’s “visited”. Then he discovered that you can get inside the Natural History Museum in London, he’d been there for real on his sixth birthday so he spent hours showing small boy around the halls.

Virtual museums

We went hunting for good virtual tours of museums and found the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum which the boys totally loved. They toured the Natural History Museum in London too on GoogleMaps and we tried a few others (Smithsonian natural history, Boston aquarium, Georgia aquarium and more) but nothing could beat those two.

The boys spent most of a morning touring these two museums, looking at all the skeletons and trying to identify them since they don’t read Japanese. They had loads of fun making up scenarios about what was going on in between the dinosaur models: were they friends? fighting? on an adventure? hunting down another dino? or trying to escape?

Reading

The usual trauma of large boy struggling to know what to read next reared its ugly head. He started a compilation of abridged Shakespeare that my brother gave him for Christmas but only lasted 3 or 4 plays, he refused to continue with various older books that my mum has given him, turned down loads of suggestions, steamed through easy readers that bored him, and generally grumped until he got hold of some new choices on the CloudLibrary app – they aren’t on his school reading scheme so he won’t get points or words towards his total but never mind that. The important thing is that he remains absorbed by reading.

Meanwhile small boy pushed onwards with the 13 storey treehouse book, entering probably his fourth week reading it. His determination was undiluted though.

Chilling

We all three non-working members of the household spent significant periods doing very little productive. The boys had their screens every day at 4pm until tea time – well except Friday when we put down a screen embargo and were met with grumps and sulks about boredom. I played some Lego Star Wars III and did loads of blogging – that counts as chilling for me. Plus jigsaw puzzles, colouring, Alexa trivia questions, watching birds in the garden, building a power treads track, coffee and cuddles, Exploding Kittens, snakes and ladders, lots of busyness doing nothing.

How about you?

How was your half term? What did you get up to? Did you all survive unscathed, sane and vaguely sober?

Published by Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

Rants, rambles, loss, gin, guests, recipes, funny kids, occasional poems, and a bit of running.

46 thoughts on “Lockdown half term”

  1. Pingback: School’s Out 2021 – Smelly Socks and Garden Peas

  4. Sounds like a very productive week. My two girls are studying for A levels and GCSEs mocks respectively so our week was less active. I used the time to schedule some posts and create Pins for my Pinterest boards.
    In retrospect, we has a productive week too. 😘

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  7. I think your son needs to move in to my house! He has some serious baking skills!!

    Having worked in a school now for 6 years, this has been the oddest half term ever. I was back in school today and all of us have felt really odd about the whole week, almost wishing we were back in school last week x

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  8. You are absolutely smashing it with all of your activities! I know that so many people are struggling with stuff to do so I hope this amazing post gives them some good ideas!
    I don’t know how you parents are doing it right now – I’m exhausted and I’m only one woman!

    Rosie

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  10. Wow Wow wow it sounds like you are great at finding activities to do during lockdown school holidays. Everything you have done sounds amazing what great memories your children will have. Those bakes look lovely xx

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  13. Pingback: The week gone by — Feb. 21 – A Silly Place

    1. I’m highly sceptical about the prospects of them going back in 2 and a bit weeks. If the school staff aren’t vaccinated and the new strain is more easily spread it’s going to be through the schools so fast. Small boy’s class had at least 2 families who have it now, several TAs and office staff have had it and that’s with less than 30% of kids in school. I’m horrified they’re even considering it.

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      1. Our kids went back a couple of weeks ago. We’ll see what happens. There was one case in my daughter’s school this past week.

        You are much further ahead with vaccinations in England than we are. My sister and brother-in-law in England have both been vaccinated. Here, my mum is 88 and hasn’t been, although they are saying she will be in March.

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      2. My parents are in their late 60s and they were vaccinated this week, as were the in laws. The infection rates remain high though and the daily deaths are still much higher than when the first lockdown started. People aren’t respecting the rules and I’m just so sad and cross.

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      3. I know exactly what you mean about people not respecting the rules. Our stay at home order ended on Wednesday. On Thursday night, a bunch of my daughter’s schoolmates all got together for a party. We’re still in the red zone which means no gatherings. They invited my daughter and she said “no way – we’re still in a pandemic you know”. I had to laugh because I overheard her talking to some of her friends on the phone and they were saying how irresponsible these kids were. LOL I’m grateful I raised two responsible daughters.

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  22. It seems like you had a great half term full of activities! I remember painting rocks when I was younger and used to absolutely love it! I love the idea that the school created a Bake Off for them, it’s such a great idea to pass the time and for them to learn to bake!

    Thank you for sharing and hope you guys made great memories during this time 🙂

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    1. The school bake off results are in. We totally misjudged the audience and baked a cake that would do well for an adult competition. The winners were a smarties rainbow cake and a dragon make of green iced cup cakes. The lemon curd layers were a bit grown up.

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  23. Sounds like a great half term, especially given the circumstances. That lemon curd cake looks amazing! I keep meaning to make a lemon based cake as I find them so light and refreshing compared to other types of cake.

    Getting out for walks makes all the difference. We try to do some long walks every week too. Our son often complains at first but then ends up really enjoying himself. I think we’ve explored the entire local area!

    From one parent to another, good luck for next week when it’s back to home schooling! X

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    1. Thank you so much! The teachers are starting to send through the timetables and work for next week so no more ignoring it 😳
      It has indeed been a lovely week, 2 more days of mooching about all together but large boy days this is just the weekend, not holiday anymore.

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