While all my US friends are enjoying an extended 'Summer Break' from school, here in Australia, we are about to mark our half-way point through the school year with a two week Winter term break. It is chilly, raining and some of us have that half-way-through-the-year depletion of mojo and motivation. My daughter's school has a three week break. What joy! Apparently, at the final assembly for the term, she was the only child in the school to be on the verge of depression at the impending 'holidays'. We love school you see. So being a good mother, I promised her that I would play schools with her. And it was the ONLY way I could get her to stop crying when leaving school on Friday. True to form, 8.15am Monday morning, she reminded me. Out came the easel. We dusted her off (she has been packed away for two years after I packed up my real classroom - sniff sniff)... Dear daughter was insistent that we have 'real' school stuff. A little bit of handwriting got ...