First up, Eve, who actually did some school work when we were away. The odd half hour every couple of days, sometimes less, sometimes more. This clearly paid off, as her teacher said that he wouldn’t know she hadn’t been at school last year.  He praised her maturity and said her writing and imagination are excellent.  I like to think that some of that is down to our influence and the fantastic experiences she’s had.

Ned did very little school work, some maths during the first three months or so, the odd postcard, the tiniest bit of reading.  As a result, he’s quite behind and is having extra help in maths and literacy.  The good news is, that he’s catching up quickly and his biggest problem is a lack of confidence in his abilities, particularly when it comes to reading and writing.  When we told him that his teacher had said very nice things about him, he said “I didn’t know she was a liar.”  He’s picking up new maths topics easily and his teacher is going to start recording his stories because his vocabulary and ideas far exceed his writing abilities, for now.

Dickon did absolutely no school work at all apart from a half hearted attempt in the first weeks in Hawaii, when he insisted on being bribed with Oreos for every question answered correctly.  As a result, he’s basically starting school from scratch in Year 1.  He’s very behind is peers, which is compounded by him being the youngest in his class.  So lots of his problems are age related, such as dodgy fine motor skills, rather than travelling related, but it’s nothing terminal and he’s also getting lots of extra help.  The good news is that he is one of the best behaved children in class, a fact that will astonish anyone who’s met him, with excellent listening skills and a great attitude to learning.  I actually laughed out loud when his teacher told me that, every time I asked him to do some work last year he yelled “No!” and ran away.

All three children have settled in well and have either slotted back into their old friendship groups, or made new ones.  They all seem happy and are enjoying telling their classes about our trip.  One of my biggest worries was that taking them out of school and doing something so different, would make it hard for them to fit back in.  Their fantastic school and lovely friends have meant that my worries were unfounded.  Ned’s teacher said as we were leaving, “It was a good decision.”

Eve and Zoe

Dear Mummy this is what I did yesterday at school.  First we got in the car and watched dispikerbal me in the car welst Kylie drove us to school.  Next we whent to the class room and practiced our hand writing.  After that we did PE witch was running and netball.  Then we whent to the NEW! AIR-KONDISHOND…library!!!  But I only got to read one book because we where playing hide and seek.  But I dident mind because I like hide and seek.

Then the bell range and we went out to morning tea and I had a flat peach.  Morning tea is what we call snack time.  I also played ‘’’it’’’ witch involves lots of running and a bit of saying ‘’’ít’’’ and tagging people and there is also a homie.

We had had a lot of fun but it was time to go back inside so we hurried back inside for our next lesson.  The next thing we did was maths with cubes and fold up things but we where making numbers a different way – by adding cubes of thousands hundreds tens and units.  And it was great but with the fold up thing it was even more fun.

Then the bell rang and it was lunch, we all ran outside!!!… for lunch and I had a chicken sandwitch.  I also had pine-apple some other so boring I cant remember what they where things then me and Zoe whent to the school tuck-shop and got ice lollies or icy-poles as they call them here.  We had a race for the 5 cents change and I won it but only because I got a headstart.

Then the bell rang and we whent inside for an after or end of school game.  We whatched a moovie about ponds and played the web of life!!!  (I was a raimbow-lorakite) then school was over and I said good-bye and went home.

THE END.

My day at school: written by Eve King.

Help and support: Stephen King.

The idea of this thing: Victoria Wallop.

Distractions: Ned and Dickon King.

Well… we have lengthy skype chats, wash clothes, go to the playground, the beach and the library, we sort out travel arrangements, upload photos to Flickr, play card games, queue in the post office, shop in the supermarket, draw pictures, go for a wander, watch TV, build dens, do school work, write postcards, bake biscuits, poke things with sticks, read books and write blog posts.    We’re quite busy really.  It’s a wonder we have time for anything else.

Yesterday morning was a bit fraught.  We were awake at 4.30am and it was very difficult to keep the children quiet until 8.30, as the rules of our condo require.  The other residents are mostly ‘snow birds’, retirees from other parts of the States escaping winter, who like their lie ins.  As a result we both gained a warning from the manager and forgot to do any school work.

Before we left, we’d resolved to do a little school work every day.  Feeling guilty while we were bobbing about in the five hundred year old fishing pool on the beach, I gave Eve a quick times tables test and did some phonics actions with the boys, resolving to do a bit later when we got back to the condo.  But we didn’t get back to the condo until tea time and by then we were all tired.

Then I thought about what we did do yesterday.  Both not very much and really quite a lot.  We found a dead eel and a dead pufferfish.  They got a good poking.  We found five different kinds of seed that we’d never seen before.  Some of them were really good at floating in the river that Dickon made using the outdoor shower.

The tiny whale museum just over the road from our condo is lovely.  We marvelled at huge whale bones, looked at sand under a microscope, played with stingray and hermit crab hand puppets, singing the ‘Stingray’ theme tune obviously, did umpteen fish jigsaws and an ecology worksheet.

We wrote our names in the sand, learnt that the Hawaiian for snack is ‘poo poo’, watched crabs scramble over the black rocks, were surrounded by a shoal of tiny silvery fish and discussed the merits of coconut collecting as a career choice.

Without even noticing, Ned swam entirely by himself without armbands for the first time.  He donned his mask and snorkel, and spent hours floating around in the shallow water.  He was in his swimming things before breakfast today.  This is the boy who used to be terrified of swimming.

After tea, Eve read the book we bought her in Disneyland, a novelisation of their new film ‘Tangled’, while the we read the boys a children’s book we found here about Barak Obama.  He used to work in Baskin and Robbins in Waikiki.

I can’t help wondering what would happen if we jettisoned the school books entirely.  Would they return to school and be absolutely fine?  My sneaking suspicion is that they would.

____________________________________________________________

For any grandparents and teachers reading this, please don’t worry, we’re not going to jettison the school work entirely.  I promise!

It’s hard to believe that this time last week we were kicking our heels in our local playground on Clapham Common, hoping that one of the children wouldn’t fall off the play house and end up in casualty.  It seems like a very long time ago.

Since then we’ve survived our first long haul flight, battled jet lag and won, and spent five days in Disneyland.  It’s been a very, very good first week.  Exhausting but good.

Disneyland was a huge hit with the children, which isn’t a great surprise.  They’ve shown amazing levels of stamina and walked for miles with very little complaint.  As long as they’ve had regular applications of Mickey shaped food, they’ve done well.  We’ve been on countless rides, many of them twice, watched two parades and three shows, a highlight being the Playhouse Disney one, really, and travelled by steam train, monorail and horse drawn tram.

Away from Disneyland we’ve been swimming most days, eaten a huge variety of vibrantly coloured cereal, done three washes and a little bit of school work every day.   All staying in a single hotel room, isn’t ideal, especially when you’re up at 5am with jetlag, but hasn’t been as bad as I’d feared.  The adults have got loads of sleep, far more than normal and the children have been very good about going to bed.  Being utterly exhausted helps on that front. As does bribery in the form of endless Disney keyrings.

For the next few weeks we’ll have a kitchen and a car, as well as proper outside space, so life will get easier.  No more meals created only from what we can buy in the hotel shop.  I really miss vegetables.

A week in Disneyland has been a surreal way to start a nine month trip, but I guess the whole concept of a nine month trip is fairly odd.  Next week will be the start of our new normal.  I’m looking forward to it.

We’ve mixed bicarbonate of soda with lime juice to create a fizzy, volcanic, mess.  Which apparently tastes “quite nice”.  But this is from the child who liked vomit flavoured jelly beans.  Yes, really.

We’ve made gloop with cornflour and spread it all over ourselves and the kitchen floor.  It really is odd stuff, but it kept a large number of children amused for at least 10 minutes, so it’s not to be sniffed at.  As long as you remember to throw it in the bin and not pour it down the sink where it’ll block your u-bend, you’ll be fine.

The highlight of the cupboard emptying exercise has to be the flour explosion.  We tried making pizza dough with some very old wholemeal flour, but it looked so unappealing we fed it to the pet worms.  I do love a good explosion, which is what we did with the rest.  We lit a candle and blew handfuls of flour across the top of the flame.  As the flour hits the flame it makes a big wooshy, explosion, flamey thing, which I tried and failed miserably to film.

The cupboards are really almost empty now.  Any suggestions for chestnut puree?

Thursday was the last day of school.  As we set off in the morning, the children were in high spirits.  They had lovely last days, their friends and teachers made lots of fuss and sent them home with armfuls of thoughtful cards and good luck messages.

I’m sad to be saying goodbye to such a great school.  They have been very supportive of our travel plans and provided lots of information about the curriculum and advice on reapplication.  We can only hope that our applications will be successful and are able to return in September.

So now the road schooling begins.  It can’t be that hard, can it?

I was chatting on Twitter with Paula about this the other day.  She is in the same position as me of having her youngest child, a summer baby, also starting school in September.  I jokingly said that our round the world trip was planned entirely so that Dickon would miss most of his first year of school, to put off the moment when I finally let go of my children’s infancy, their long days at home.

But I wasn’t really joking.  OK, so the reason for taking our trip does not entirely pivot around one child’s schooling.  However, the timing of it, and a strong desire to hold onto my children a little longer, to have them with me for more of their childhood, they were key reasons for embarking on this undertaking.

Our children go to a very good school, which they enjoy and we are happy with.  But I wish they had more time at home.  That we had more flexibility.  If it’s a sunny day, we can’t just hop on a train to the seaside to spend the day poking about in rock pools, if they feel like reading all day, it’s not an option.  I realise that it’s disruptive for schools if children do not attend regularly.  And I know that I am not cut out for full-time home schooling.  I don’t think my patience or the kitchen floor could take the mess and chaos that would ensue.  But I do wish that we all had more time together, that I didn’t feel that other people are getting the best of my children.

And I particularly wish that my baby, my little baby, who I held in my arms as a newborn such a short time ago, could stay with me a little longer.  So I’ve concocted a plan.  It involves three continents, nine countries and five backpacks.  How I’ll cope when we come back, I have no idea.

If any politicians could give me the answer to that, I’ll happily vote for them.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

This blog post is sponsored by Giraffe Preschools.

As you might expect from such a beacon of educational wonderfullness, competition for places is fierce.  Despite taking on 90 children a year, the catchment area stretches less than half a km and about half of places are taken by siblings.

So when we started talking about our trip, we decided that we’d only do it if we were able to keep the children’s school places.  We’d be mad otherwise, right?  Hmmm.

About two years ago, we wrote to the Head of the Infant School asking her what she thought about our idea to go travelling.  She sent us a lovely letter in reply, enthusing about the great opportunity it would be for our children, but dealing a killer blow.  The school isn’t allowed to keep our places open, the council automatically gives them away after six weeks.

For months, we tried to think of ways around it by trimming our plans to fit.  But it just didn’t feel right.  I was already in mourning for the trip that we weren’t going to have.  After talking and talking and talking, we decided to go ahead anyway and keep our fingers crossed that we’ll get places on our return.

Yesterday we wrote to the headteachers informing them that we’d bought our tickets and would be leaving.  Gulp.  Are we mad?