ARE you The Smugs? Are your children spending a half-term full of improving activities? Eleanor Shaw provides five aspirational pastimes to shame other families:
Themed arts and crafts
Making an alligator from an egg-box? No. No, my Isabella and Duncan get an extra couple of layers of education slathered on top, like sculpting Rosa Parks’s bus from papier mache or drawing using Stone Age materials. This week we’re learning about Jesus, Da Vinci and recycling by creating The Last Supper from a pair of old corduroy trousers.
Rewilding
Rewilding isn’t just for the environment, but for the soul. We’ll be spending the week on daily excursions to National Trust properties to see deer roam as our prehistoric forebears did, teaching Jelly and Dunco to treasure the environment and imagine a world not overrun with vaping and pornography.
Taking screen breaks
The children are fully digital-market ready, but there’s a time and place for screens and it’s in the squalid bedrooms of the less fortunate. We while away the time playing board games, finding eggshells and mushrooms in the garden, and performing little plays. TikTok is a theft of childhood and should be banned.
Volunteering at a soup kitchen
The offspring love working at our local soup kitchen, The Houseless Hummusman. He doles out delicious and nutritious vegan dishes to the poor rather than money they’d spend on drugs. We all put in a shift, because Tim and I invested £20,000 in the business and we need it back.
Extra schoolwork
There’s only so much learning that can be done at school because of the natural limitations of the teachers. A week is an eternity in a child’s education. They could learn a whole new language. Instead we’ve got a private tutor to help my Jelly with maths, because your SATS results determine your whole life.
