Spring holiday. What the April break actually offers.

The spring holiday is different from the summer holiday in scale, but it produces the same fundamental need: unstructured time, physical activity, and proximity to the natural world. My son, in the spring holiday, is most himself when we manage to do very little of significance — when the week contains more walks than destinations, more improvised meals than planned events, more being-in-the-garden than organised activities.

This takes deliberate protection. The school holiday has a gravitational pull toward activity — the residual parental anxiety about children's time being well-spent, the competing schedules of siblings and friends, the activities that suggest themselves when there is nothing planned.

The raft is not the point. The empty Tuesday afternoon is the point. The raft is what happened when the empty Tuesday afternoon was available. Without the empty Tuesday, there is no raft. Without the raft, there is one fewer memory of being eleven in a garden with a friend and the full afternoon available. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the practice. The practice comes from the decision to try it once, this week, in the ordinary moment that is already available. This is the specific thing that produces the change. The change comes from the