Breakfast With The Birds

We just started our new homelearning theme this week - Forest Animals - and the Bees love it! To introduce the theme, we went for daily 45-minute walks around our lush estate every morning, immersing ourselves in the forest-like vegetation, scouting for squirrels, monitor lizards and birds. 

Big Bee's imagination was imbued with all that she read in her favourite Enchanted Wood series as we took these enjoyable walks. Coupled with our recent experiences in the various theme parks of Japan, she would launch into delightful commentary a la an Enchanted Wood theme park tour. Excerpts from her tour introduction: "And now, we are approaching the slope of doom where it is dark and dangerous, walk very carefully and quietly....we are getting close to the forest of horror where snakes and monitor lizards live....oh! We are now reaching the forest of the squirrels....this is the path of joy with many flowers and trees...." 

We even identified 2 potential candidates for our very own Faraway Tree in the estate - a grand tree with orange-tinged bark and another enormous majestic tree with expansive branches that reaches way up into the sky. Every time we walk past these trees, Big Bee would exclaim that these are our Faraway Trees! 

Little Bee - being rather timid at times - would cower in fear whenever we strolled past areas of "doom" or "horror" with jie-jie's description, and would skip with lighthearted beatitude through sections of "happiness". As for me, I just found it all so entertaining, immersing ourselves in this pretend forest and living an alternate life of fantasy! 

With the lovely weather yesterday morning, and prompted by Big Bee's eager question about "What are we doing today?" the moment we woke up, I decided to have an impromptu breakfast picnic with the Bees - right in our estate! I packed kaya sandwiches, cookies, fruits, raisins and coffee, much to the Bees' excitement as they hovered around me, suggesting what I should pack for their picnic. Poor hubby was immensely jealous as he had to go off to work whilst we had so much fun! 

We then ambled around, looking for that perfect picnic spot where we could pretend that we were in an abundant forest, and then settled down for a lovely breakfast beneath the solicitude of raintrees and flame of the forest trees. It was a brilliant breakfast - the Bees were absolutely enraptured as they sat on our little mat, munching on goodies with nature all around us. Of course, there were the inevitable sibling scuffles here and there, but all were peaceful eventually, and we had our signature Enchanted Wood walk after breakfast. 

We even spotted 2 yellow lovebirds, serenading us throughout much of our breakfast, much to the Bees' excitement, and Big Bee was snapping photos of these birds enthusiastically.

Can you spot the 2 lovebirds? 

What a perfect morning. Who says we need to venture out of our backyard for new experiences? Sometimes, a rich and vivid imagination coupled with an awareness of the beauty in the places nearest to us would be more than sufficient :)