Not, after all, a beach picnic for the Cyprus home educators

Last summer, some of the Cyprus home educators met regularly at the beach during the summer months. Several of us thought it would be a good idea to do this again, now the weather's getting warmer. It was difficult to find a suitable evening, but eventually June 26th was proposed for the first gathering.

In Cyprus, the end of June is warm, and guaranteed sunny. Right?

Wrong.

During the afternoon, there were a few spots of rain. By about 4pm, it was raining quite significantly. I didn't worry... the odd summer shower usually dries up very quickly in Cyprus.

By 4.30, I wondered if the event would be cancelled. Richard called the friends who organised it and they said they were packing up to go, and that two other families were there already.

So we put our picnic together, and found our beach chairs and mats. We also found several kagoules and an umbrella since we couldn't see any sign of the rain abating.

Indeed, as we drove the couple of miles or so to McKenzie beach, it started tipping it down:


At least it had given Richard the opportunity to wear the new lightweight (but very waterproof) sailing jacket he bought with last year's birthday money:


When we got there, we found just one family; not the three we were expecting. They told us that the other two families had decided to go back to one of their homes to have their picnic there. But the remaining family was determined to swim:


Since I had my kagoule, and the rain did ease somewhat as we arrived, I thought I would at least wade out a little way into the water to see how warm it was:


It wasn't too bad, actually. Although I would not have wanted to swim!


Daniel and Becky had no problem staying warm:


We stayed for about fifteen minutes, I suppose. It was still raining, albeit fairly lightly by this time, and was definitely too wet to picnic on the beach. So we piled back into the car, and took our picnic to Jörn and Sheila's, where, with the other visiting family, we ate our picnic in their living room.

Katie asked me to comb her hair, and then put a clip in it. It wasn't a very thick clip, so I just put it at the back, and then took a photo so she could see what it looked like:


Daniel, meanwhile, had got hold of the dictionary. He and Marie were having fun finding some fascinating new words, which he then wrote in a sentence for her (although I have totally forgotten what they were).


Katie asked Becky to read her a book, and then produced a 'Magic School Bus' book, describing - as far as I could tell - the circulation system of the human body. It was quite a long book, and Lukas enjoyed it too.


Jacob then leaned over Daniel's shoulder, interested in yet more definitions in the dictionary:


Although we're no longer home educating, one never stops being a home educator. And it's so reassuring to see these moments when home educated children are happily doing what might be classed as English language (or biology, in the case of Lukas and Katie) for fun on a Saturday evening, and not because anybody has scheduled it for them.

Not to be outdone, Helen 'read' a book to Daniel:


Meanwhile, our friend Chris had picked up Marie's maths book, and was discussing something in it. So Marie joined him, and they had a fairly involved discussion about quadratic equations. Yes, even algebra comes into unschooling from time to time.


After much discussion, some of us then played a single round of Balderdash (seven turns) which I suppose could be classed as linguistics, language, and of course creative writing: