Summer Holiday Bucket Lists

On the last day of term all three children wrote their bucket lists for the summer holiday.  We are now nearly at the end of week three and we have achieved so many of their wishes already. 

Some are easier than others to do – our youngest son has the easiest choices with Mr Whippy ice cream as one of his and a small list of 8 things to achieve.  At the other end of the spectrum our daughter wrote a list of 25 things ranging from having her ears pierced, which she did during the first week to staying up to watch all the Harry Potter films back to back and transforming her dolls house into the Weasley home from Harry Potter.  This has yet to be started, but she has a lot of ideas on paper.  She has also set herself targets like she wants to do so much reading a day (half a book a day), be up and dressed by a certain time each day.  Anyone that knows her, knows she likes to lie in and is rarely out of bed before 7.30am on a school day and can be as late as 11am on a weekend, so to say she is going to be out of bed by 9am each day is a task in itself!  So far she has managed it each day, but I have also told her that she can stay in bed longer if we have nothing planned.  However, ASD children always push themselves to do their best and to achieve things, whether they are at school or enjoying their summer holiday.

All three children had written a day out in London on their lists and last Friday we did an open top sightseeing bus tour around London.  It was one of the best days out we have ever done.  They enjoyed learning the history of London and seeing the top tourist attractions.  For our youngest son it was the ideal way for him to see the sights as he didn’t have to walk in the crowds and we had the bus to ourselves for half the journey.

The first three weeks of the holidays seem to have flown by and as well as enjoying days out, the kids have been just as happy to play in the garden or go for a bike ride.  We have four more weeks to tick off everything that is on their bucket lists and fingers crossed we will do this.  At the end of each week, the kids are also writing down what they have enjoyed from that week and I’m sticking it onto a piece of card which I will laminate and we can keep to look back on as their memories for this holiday.