Slow down and take a break

It's time to slow down and take a break. The Easter Holidays combined with May Day has created the perfect opportunity to take a few days' leave and get 10 in return.?

Here are some tips for how to maximise this time for you and your family to create a memorable sense of togetherness.

Plan to socialise with other families, or go away for the weekend together

• This is something you don't have a lot of time to do on normal workdays and weekends even though socialising is an important human need at any age and stage.?
• If you have children, post-Covid they are needing to learn how to socialise all over again and be part of a group. Educators are seeing a very big Covid-hangover in this area. You will have to be proactive to build your child's confidence.
• If you don't want to go away, you can even arrange to have a campout in someone's garden. It's still super exciting for your kids.

The excitement of a treasure hunt

If you have children, Easter is the perfect time to arrange a treasure hunt by way of an Easter Egg Hunt:

• Kids love the surprise and hide and seek-nature of a treasure hunt.
• If it's too hot to put chocolate eggs out in the garden, then replace them with square pieces of white paper that they can then exchange for eggs.
• If you don't have a garden, hide marshmallow Easter eggs inside and outside your car, or in the house.
• Create an Easter Egg hunt with clues for older children, or get older children to design one for the younger children in the group (they love it).

If you like the idea of a treasure hunt, use this holiday period to start geocaching:

• This is hide & seek using GPS co-ordinates.
• It's a global phenomenon and there are over millions of geocaches around the world.
• A cache consists of a watertight container from a small pill bottle to yoghurt containers and large plastic boxes that are hidden in interesting locations and filled with nik-naks or ‘treasure’ for trading.?
• The cache owners place treasure inside the container and when other geocache hunters find it they can remove a treasure as long as they replace it with something else.

Cook special meals

• If you are religious you may have specific dishes that you cook at this time of the year to mark the moment.
• Try some new recipes to break out of the same old same old.Maybe bake an Easter cake or biscuits
• You will find recipes I have tried recently on my?Nikki Bush Speaker Facebook page.

Move together

• Go for walks or cycles as a family.
• Visit a botanical garden and take a picnic.
• Take your dogs for a walk together.

Make fun out of nothing with your kids

• There are so many creative ideas that will make you a hero in your child's life, a source of magic, wonder and surprise.
• Here are some of my favourite Easter-related ones:
• Chocolate Rice Krispie Nests
• Marbled Eggs
• Bouncy Eggs
• Treasure Hunts

Have afternoon siestas

• There is nothing like being able to put your feet up for an hour in the afternoon to recharge your batteries.
• If you have young children you may need to do this in relays or when you have a caregiver.

Breathe

• Intentionally breathe in and out (we often forget the out breath).
• Practice the 4:7:8 breathing method everytime you wash your hands: Breathe in for the count of four, hold for the count of seven, breathe out for the count of 8. Do this a few times and it will calm and ground you.
• Lie on the ground/the lawn/the patio and look up at the sky, watch the clouds scudding around and have no agenda, just breath in the magnificence of it all. I did this yesterday for about 20 minutes and it was just wonderful!

The neuroscience is clear that we cannot sustain high performance without taking breaks to restore and re-energise ourselves. Easter provides that break, that time to shift gears, to create some space and focus on connection with loved ones.

Make this break count.

Have a Happy Easter.