Home Learning Trip Part 1: Learning more about turtles and nature (with home learning and travel tips)

I’ve been wanting to have a chance to watch at least once how turtle lay eggs in front of my eyes since young. Yeah, strange as it may sound but I am very intrigued by this very natural process of how the mummy turtle came out of the sea water, finds a spot, digs an egg chamber, begins laying eggs, cover it back and then return to the sea. Finally, oh finally, I got the chance to see this and best of all I got to bring along smarties to catch it with me, hopefully!

It was a long journey, although the place is just in our neighboring country, Malaysia. The journey took us almost a day to get there, alright maybe half. We have to take 2 flights, an hour van ride and lastly, an hour speedboat ride in order to get there. We had our life jackets on but not our luggage.

Home learning and travel tip #1: Long journey usually turned parents off because you know or you never know if your children can take it. Prepare something to entertain them: food, books, toys, etc. Kids who know what they want, allow them to pack their own luggage. If they whine, tell them to turn to their luggage, not you. This is the best time to train them how to self-entertain and be independent.

The speedboat ride was extremely windy and we have to literally hold mei mei in case she flew off. She couldn’t even open her eyes properly to see as she mentioned the wind kept flipping her eyelids but she got to open her mouth and taste the salty wind though. As for gor gor, he had his spectacles on therefore his eyes were well protected.

Home learning and travel tip #2: Pre-preparation is important when traveling with children. Always be sure to explain to them what it would be expected and what we can expect, such as everyone’s safety during the travel. The journey may be rough for some but this is the best time to teach them about safety, taking care of others and be aware of our surroundings. Since we know about the speedboat ride, we told smarties about the danger and safety rules on a boat before we travel. Hence, during the speedboat ride, smarties made sure everyone is seated nicely with life jackets put on. When the boat started, they know they have to be seated properly and not running around.

The moment we reached, smarties carefully and slowly got off the boat and headed towards the beach. They saw the signboard saying Bubbles and turned back to us saying we reached the right place. Oh yes, finally we arrived at the Bubbles Dive Resort, what a cute name it is! The place was serene and natural with loads of green.

Home learning and travel tip #3: Tell your children where you are heading to and the name of the place you will be staying. If there will be multiple locations, print out your travel itinerary and let them keep a copy. Let them be aware and have a sense of what’s going on.

Check out their cool signboard!

Guess what, smarties weren’t fully changed and they have already gotten themselves in the sand before I can do anything. They were thrilled to have the whole beach to themselves! Oh well, this is a holiday, mummy going to let it go as much as possible…right?

Home learning and travel tip #4: Hellooo, you are on holiday! So let it go and let them have fun the way they want it! They will be so grateful to you and you can enjoy your time of your own too! Children need freedom and so do you. This is the time which you can make way for greater spiritual and psychological well-being.  😉

We met up with our cousin at the beach and as just like any girly girls, they wanted to be a princess. Not Snow White, not Cinderella, not Rapunzel but a mermaid because they are by the sea. Gor gor helped to “fix” their mermaid tails and looked at how delighted they were.

We spent a little time exploring the place and it was amazing! We found turtle hatchery corner where they protect and incubate the turtle eggs. Smarties were fascinated by it and couldn’t wait to see the baby turtles during our stay.

Home learning and travel tip #5: Explore your surroundings with your children. This is the time to pay attention to the present moment and to the world around you as you are away from the hustle and bustle of the city life. Being mindful of the surroundings is beneficial especially for children and it helps to develop their spatial awareness where they have to know where they can go or cannot go, what they can do or cannot do at different corners.

There were hammocks just by the beach and this is the place where I spent most of my time reading my book under the shade while watching over the kids playing at the beach.

There was also a mini playground made out of recycled materials and a little rabbit house right beside it.

Our 4 days at the Bubbles Dive Resort, it was filled with loads of fun and activities. They have a kids club to entertain the kids where a homeschooling teacher will create some games and activities to for the kids to play with. All children got together to play and learn.

Home learning and travel tip #6: Allow your children to make friends with other children. It’s ok if they do not want to, as some children are not used to or it may takes them some time to warm up but if they do, just let them go. Children need friends. Spending time with friends is interesting and exciting because having friends reinforce children’s well-being and improves their way of handling different social situations.

As you can read from the name of the resort, it is a diver’s heaven. We do see many diver enthusiasts at the resort going out for diving throughout the day. Becuase smarties couldn’t go for diving, that doesn’t stop them from getting to know more about diving. The diving instructors were very friendly and helpful. They explained about how the diving equipment being used, how to stay safe in the water, etc.

So, what do we do in the evening or when the sky gets dark? Well, that’s the best time where we sit down together and chit chat over our meals. The time where all connect with each other without any device that disrupts our meals. As for the children, they focused on eating and after that, a little beach themed bingo game that was specially made by me, the mommy.

Home learning and travel tip #7: We always make it a point, no device when food is served because we want everyone to focus what we are supposed to do and that’s eating. We may chit chat when there’s no more food in the mouth and not be blabbering away with a mouthful of food. Table manners are to be taught since young and is good to remind again and again till they get it. Not forgetting, the parents have to set a good example too.

After dinner is time for bed because, after a day of fun play, we were all exhausted. Not only that, we also want to recharge ourselves and prepare for our quest of the night. That’s to catch turtle lay eggs or the birth of the hatchlings. Want to know if we managed to catch it? Do stay tuned to our next upcoming blog 😉