Oh my goodness. Those who follow along on our social media channels (FB and Insta) will know that we have not long returned home from the most beautiful holiday with our family.
While we were away, we celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles and Fiji Day (two important celebrations on our family's calendar!) There was feasting and swimming, reading and walking, whale watching and sleeping in! It was so lovely and we have come back feeling very refreshed. Often when we go away, I use a few things to enhance our learning while we are in holiday mode. For example I often take these things with us:
* Binoculars
* Field guides for bird identification
* Sea life books
* Zip lock bags for nature’s treasures we might find and look more closely at back at home
* Rainy day games like UNO and a deck of playing cards
* Loads of books
* Drawing paper
* Lego
* Good audio books for the lonnnnnnnng car rides
This year I didn't take the field guides or the sea life books but we did do SO much incidental learning along the way. I thought I'd share some of that with you here in photos and a few wordy descriptions ;)
Zeeki caught his first fish.
Bush paths were travailed.
Even the biggest kids collected shells :)
Pelican watching.
Bush cave exploring. Swimming in crystal clear waters.
Observing Fiji Day with Pupu and talking about ITaukei culture (traditional Indigenous Fijian culture). Watching the full moon rise out of the sea on the 15th day of the lunar calendar.
Listening to Pupu sound the shofar to announce the beginning of our Feast of Tabernacles celebration (8 days long!)
In pairs, we painted some canvasses. They were paint by numbers that I made up and sketched before we left. Nobody knew what the full picture was or that their canvas would eventually join with others. It was interesting to see everyone's efforts.
The left is the picture of what it looked like when I printed it. And right is the collection of our canvasses all joined together. It's a picture of the Tabernacle that the Israelites lived near while in the Wilderness. God 'tabernacled' with the people and His presence was with them in a cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.
Feast of Tabernacles is the equivalent I guess of our family Christmas. We celebrate the fact that Yeshua (Jesus) came to 'tabernacle' or 'dwell' among humankind in fleshly form. This year we baked our nativity scene and ate it! ;)
We also checked out the Fresnel lenses which we recognised in this old lighthouse lamp. We had learned about these a few years ago and the kids enjoyed the $1 interactive audio lesson too. There was dancing and worship. And there were lots of laughs over the game Ethan introduced us to called Stuff Happens (where you rate painful accidents!)
There was lots of nature appreciation too: Bird and whale watching. Black cockatoo spotting.
Lorikeets feeding.
Skinks sunning themselves. Beautiful flowers everywhere.
And we really enjoyed hanging out at the public library, in cafes and at the unit.
Learning + life are connected.
More soon, Lusi x