The best things come in threes

The luxury that we have on Fridays is to be able to adapt the day according to Ferdy's mood. I think that some little kids (ie Ferdy) do not take much in when they aren't in the mood to learn. If we start doing something, and it seems that he is too distracted or can't concentrate, we can postpone it to later, or occasionally even the next day.

This Friday, Ferdy was not in the mood to learn. He's tired, he's very grumpy, and the only thing that he wants to do is play Star Wars with Gil, watch Star Wars or listen to audiobooks. He even took to his bed at 6pm straight after supper one night this week and spent all evening listening to Mr Gum. Ferdy hasn't been to bed before 8pm since he was about two years old.

So today we did no writing, no reading, no maths and no phonics.

Instead we went to the park and the woods all morning. We played pirates (yes, I had to join in), we did races and chasing, and Ferdy & Gil had lots of stick / light sabre fights.

In the afternoon the three of us went to see Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

 

We'd seen Hiccup Theatre doing The Gingerbread Man last year, and all of us really enjoyed it. The songs are really catchy - we still sing the Run, Run, Run song even now - and they are so innovative with the set and costumes and delightfully bring the story to life.

The Three Bears was equally engaging. Goldilocks was very funny as a spoilt brat, and the hapless three bears were charming in their double bobble hats. My favourite thing was the set made of recycled materials (the underlying message was reduce, reuse and recycle or 'make, do, mend and make better'), which, muchlike the Wombles, the bears gathered daily in the woods. I think I'd rather like to look through windows made out of toilet seats, and have a shower powered by bike wheels.

Ferdy's best bit was when the puppet baby bear had a shower (a bucked filled with bits of blue paper), and Gil's was when Golidlocks burnt herself on the oven...

I'd like to say when we got home we did lots of reading and writing but the truth is, when we got home Ferdy spent an hour making ships out of lego and then I let him watch Star Wars VII.

However, at the weekend, he wrote a theatre review, he read his whole schoolbook and I even caught him practising writing the number 3.

Back on Jan 11th.

Dear Santa

One of the great things about our Fridays, is that we can make the day into a project. On a good day, we can start with a theme, the thread of which will run through the whole day, and things he is doing at school can evolve and be brought to life by stuff we do at home and whilst we are out.

I had booked for us to go to meet Father Christmas at Kedleston Hall, so we started the day by writing a letter to him.

Surely that's not a smile Ferdy? Whilst writing...???!!!

My absolute favourite bit is the commas

We have a scrapbook for Ferdy's work on Fridays so we made a copy for him to put in an envelope and give to Santa.

Off we went.

We arrived far too early and were told that Santa was drying himself off after being caught in the rain so we went out into the garden to check out the advent trail.

All around the Pleasure Grounds, there are 24 boxes, each attached to a tree and containing an activity. It was brilliant! We had to: sing carols, (I always thought it was 'away in a manger, no crib for a bed but learnt from Gil today that it's actually 'I am a robot, no crib for a bed'); count snowflakes; test our knowledge of Christmas; guess what's in a stocking, and meet a polar bear.

And then it was time to meet the man himself.

There are so many Santas. They live in shopping centres, garden centres, toddler groups, parties etc etc. And Ferdy has already decided that they can't all be real. He's been asking things like can reindeer really fly but it's up to him to decide so I usually ask him what he thinks. He's still pretty self-centred and isn't actually that interested in my (dreary) answers to his questions anyway..

This encounter with Santa, however, felt magical. We knocked on a large door in the Stables and were ushered (by an Elf) into a low lit, intimately atmospheric room with a glowing fire and a kindly Santa at its heart. Ferdy was a bit shy (so was I!) but gave him his letter and helped Santa read it. Santa loved the picture of himself (don't we all..?), and Ferdy, although totally enchanted by him, managed to impart that we were going to be in Holland for Christmas, and that he liked Yoda.

This Santa was, most definitely, the real deal.

Gil was a little less impressed and stated very loudly that he 'don wan to see that man never again'. He also cried because his present wasn't a toy.

Then is was time for some Christmas crafts. We made an owl lantern, some stained glass very fierce robins and Ferdy also made a Octoblock Robin card (he had 8 eyes).

Ferdy really enjoyed doing the crafts and once we got a bit restless we went outside for some running around.

He loved our game of weaving in and out of the trees and trying to catch each other. I was actually a tiny bit annoyed when they both managed to catch me.. Time for lunch then.

Ever since Ferdy was 1 year old we have had to find cafes with books in.
I think I know every cafe in Derbyshire and Staffordshire that contains books

On days like these, and when Ferdy is not too tired, we can do so much. When we got home we played a numbers game grouping numbers into highest and lowest, and odd and even groups.

We've lost number 3

He even read me the whole of a rather tricky book because it was about a brother and a sister writing letters to Santa.

A fierce Robin with claws and toenails

Lovely, strong Legoland

Such are the adjectives Ferdy used to depict Legoland, where we went today. Not, perhaps my choice although I think strong is quite a good way of describing lego.

Ferdy's learning about adjectives at the moment so we wrote down as many as we could think of, looked at some books and pointed them out, and listened (quite a lot of times) to a rather catchy song from Grammaropolis about them.

We walked through the Christmas market to get to Legoland and, spotting the nativity scene, Ferdy told us all about the story of the nativity.

The best bit about Legoland was the vast scene of Birmingham which filled a whole room, and lit up when the lights went down for night time. We spent quite a lot of time looking at all the 2500 minifigures and the scenes in which they were working and playing.

Both boys also really enjoyed making lego cars and speeding them down the track.

Sadly for Mum, however, the cafe was awful so, once we'd done everything (which included going on rides, building houses and watching a 4D film), we decided to go to Birmingham Central Library to have lunch there and look at some books.

It's debatable whether Ferdy was happier racing cars down a track at Legoland (cost for one adult and two kids = £28) or going up and down, on his own, on the escalators at Central Library (cost for one adult and two kids = 0p).

The childrens' library has a huge selection of books, many of which I had to read. We also managed to find a phonics book on the sounds er and ir which Ferdy is learning this week, for him to read to me.

After a tiring day we boarded a very busy train home, but luckily for me and the rest of the people in our carriage, Ferdy (the Storyteller) was able to recount almost the entire collection of Aesop's Fables, his current bedtime stories of choice.

The Labours of Ferdinand

One of Ferdy's favourites of the Greek Myths is the story of Heracles, who is renowned for his great courage and strength.

As I have mentioned a few times, as opposed to Heracles who was able to strangle a snake as a mere toddler, Ferdy has been having difficulty with the development of his fine and gross motor skills. He actually seems to have made a bit of a leap in the last few weeks, but slower gross and fine motor skills can affect everything you do, from learning to write to getting dressed and eating. And when everyone around you seems much more able, it is easy to start finding excuses not to do such tasks and lose confidence.

This half term, therefore, we have been trying to focus a little more on physical activities and Friday began with a Jumping Clay home ed session. They usually do something educational like parts of the body but today it was Christmas tree decorations.

l-r: rolling a line; cutting the squares; attaching the squares; rolling a sausage shape

I suppose it's going to be a Star Wars themed Christmas then...

R2D2

The next task was a run around the park, pausing at the duckpond for some maths.

20 mallards - 2 mallards = 

Back at home, we watched some videos about length and measuring capacity (Ferdy is doing length at school) but Ferdy just wanted to look at books so we looked up his heroes in the encyclopedia we got out of the library last week, and learnt how to use an index. Inspired by his hero Ferdy decided to play the labours of Heracles so we set physical tasks for us to complete around the house. Sadly, tidying the playroom was rejected as one.

Ferdy wrote a book review about Heracles and drew a picture. Give him a few weeks and he'll be fighting the three-headed Cerberus, no problem.

Cerberus

Fridays come in all shapes and sizes

Our day began with a lesson in pastoral care as Gil had to have his preschool injections. Ferdy and I took him to the drs with Ferdy promising to hold his hand whilst he had them. How sweet, I thought, until Ferdy found some Beano and Dandy annuals in the waiting room and forgot all about his altruistic offerings.

Next stop was the library, where we returned some of our books and took out 17 more.

Ferdy's learning about adjectives at school so we looked at quite a few books and picked out the adjectives, a favourite was Top Place Percy, about Percy the plaice who thinks he is a 'slow, dull, flat, boring' fish.

And because we hadn't read enough books, we popped to a cafe where there were more to read.

It's imperative to wear a flower on your head when reading books

Earlier that morning we had watched some some videos and songs about 2D and 3D shapes and learnt about the properties of 3D shapes so we thought it might be nice to go out and see if we could find some 3D shapes.

It shaped out to be a pretty successful shape hunt. Ferdy searched for, and Gil modelled the shapes

Cuboids

Cylinders

Spheres

Ferdy even found a cone at the end of the day, or part of one, but we decided it counted.











It was one of those slightly fragmented sort of days where nothing really seemed to take shape (I know, I just can't help it) but actually we did rather a lot. Ferdy seems to be quite a bit happier at doing some reading and some writing on Fridays so all of that takes up less time; he often reads straight after breakfast, and does his writing at the end of the day. And I love how what we learn seeps into the weekend; 'Ferdy do you want your cheese grated or in cubes?', 'In cuboids please Mummy'...

Ferdy wrote: 'I went on the fast swing and an apple is a sphere'

Commas, Memory, Jorvik Vikings, and other Museums

Until this Friday, I would never have used a comma before an and when writing a list. But when we looked at commas by writing 'I like At-Ats, C3PO, R2D2, and Lando', Ferdy told me that there is a comma before the and. I should have learnt never to argue with him as we looked it up and he's right (although I pointed out to him that it's optional, so I'm right too). And I always wondered why Vampire Weekend went on about an Oxford Comma.

Billy had a client meeting in York today so we decided to go with him. Whilst getting ready, we played a quick Kim's memory game. Ferdy remembered 5/9 the first time and 9/9 the second.




York is famous for its Vikings so to prepare ourselves we looked up some videos of Vikings. Seeing as Ferdy is so engrossed in Greek Mythology at the moment, I thought listening to some Norse Mythology on the way to York might be a good introduction too.

Our first stop in York was the Jorvik Viking Centre. We were immediately transported back to 960 in a time capsule, and taken on a trip through a viking village.

View from our capsule

We met a blacksmith, fishermen, a leatherworker selling shoes and even a priest giving a lady her last rites. There were lots of animals, and the smells in places (especially the rotting meat) were a little unbearable. I think I would have preferred not to encounter the man on his outdoor toilet, who had clearly had too much ale and salted fish.

At the market

Over lunch we read some books about Vikings, the best was Viking Raiders. Both boys love an illustrated book with loads going on in each picture, especially if it contains gory battles and excessive amounts to read. Mum and Dad less so.

We then transported ourselves back 150 million years to the Yorkshire Museum's Jurassic World exhibition where there was loads of interactive stuff to get involved in.

I drew the line, however, at filling trousers and pants with the rubber bits used to cover the ichthyosaur fossils.

More reading about Mary Anning

Two museums in one day is perhaps too much for a 3 and 5 year old (and definitely for two 42 year olds) but luckily our day ended with ale for Mum, ale for Dad (the intention was to recreate the Viking village in our hotel room), and chips for the boys (notice the Oxford Comma before and). We even managed to go to another museum on Saturday, but that's another story.

A Ferdyosaur scares a Plesiosaur

Telling Tales

Ferdy loves stories. He spends a lot of his time in the world of stories, be it Star Wars, Greek Myths, the Moomins, Beatrix Potter, Roald Dahl, Lego Star Wars... In fact, if I need him to listen to me (he doesn't listen to me very much), starting my sentence with 'Once upon a time' will often guarantee his attention. And he has become such an expert at concocting stories, I cannot discern if they're fact or fiction. Apparently in one of the school church services all the teachers dressed up as Star Wars characters; and all the new girls in his class are called Emily, Bemilie, Gemelie and Shemelie.

But despite this, he is not keen on reading. And we've been worried that making him read books will destroy his love of them. So we're trying to work out ways for him to enjoy learning through stories.

It was a rainy, cold day this Friday (sorry blog is late due to half term) and we attended assembly, then did what we often do when it's rainy: visit Derby Museum. They had an exhibition on WW1 and although it wasn't that kid friendly, we looked at the medals and Ferdy told us all about what the women did during the war (worked on farms), which he'd learnt at his school trip to the Arboretum.

But the best bit is the nature gallery. Not only is it full of unusual stuffed animals like a pangolin, echidna and a sun bear, but it also has a whole array of animal books and other resources. We read an encyclopedia on reptiles, a book about insects and a story about animal habitats.

Then it was time for some drawing. Gil drew an eagle, I drew a zebra and Ferdy drew a stick insect larvae.

Using the Encyclopedia as reference for stick insect larvae

And we played with the story cubes for ages, Ferdy even read all the words without realising he was reading.

Once upon a time there was a parrot, and it hunted an octopus with eight legs, but the octopus only wanted to play in the jungle (peals of laughter).

Back at home they wanted to do playdoh. All in all a good day for those fine motor skills. And perhaps we'll try and write a story with story cubes soon.

In other news, our letter to Luca has arrived! It only took 6 weeks and 5 days.

It ain't like dustin' crops, boy!

In Star Wars IV A New Hope, Han makes it clear to Luke that jumping into hyperspace is no mean feat; it requires precise calculations, without which they could, 'fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova'.

Ferdy is finding that learning to read and write, and to concentrate and follow instructions at school is also no mean feat. His gross and fine motor skills are taking a while to develop (we mustn't forget that he didn't walk until he was nearly 2) and without those everything is seeming pretty tricky. And when you are five years old and you are bouncing too close to those supernovas, whilst your peers  are navigating around them easily, I imagine that you may start to think you will never be able to do it!

For me it's really hard to know when I should (gently) push him (or not so gently sometimes - I make him read a whole book and write something on Fridays and it can be quite a battle), and when to leave him to go his own way.

This Friday was a great example of how when left alone he not only produces something surprising, but he also seems much happier doing it.

He's been watching Numberblocks at school this week and asked if he could watch it. I agreed when he suggested he write down all the sums that they were doing. Which he did! Every single one.

We then went off to our forest school. I had been thinking that maybe we should concentrate more on gross and fine motor activities on Fridays but decided we'd leave things to chance a bit and just focus on enjoying ourselves, as Ferdy was really keen to be out today.

But was I inadvertently performing Jedi mind tricks? He spent quite a lot of the morning picking up leaves with plastic tweezers to clean up the mud kitchen.

 

He really enjoyed himself today, and there was a male helper who he got on well with, they did some bug hunts, collected leaves, climbing etc. Both he and Gil love it when there's a bloke teacher or helper; they're often are more willing to do things for themselves and be more grown up, and they chat more.

Not the best example of being grown up but he had a fun day!

They quickly reverted back to babies though when I realised I'd forgotten my wallet and couldn't buy them ice-creams in the cafe, is there a collective noun for boys having a tantrum?

At home we threaded pasta necklaces for my Padmé costume (I seem to have been allocated the rather flattering role of Padmé at the Star Wars party I didn't know we were having), and Ferdy wrote 'take me to Tatooine as fast as you can'; a very useful thing to be able to write when you are negotiating a long and difficult journey into hyperspace.

The Great (Clone) War

In the trenches with the British army

We are trying to do a big trip at least every 1/2 term, and Ferdy is just about to start learning about WW1 so as an introduction we decided to go to to the Imperial War Museum in London.

Our trip began after school on Thursday when we got the train. The boys were most excited about two things: eating supper on the train and having a sleepover in Francine (my Dad)'s flat because, 'it has no stairs'.

The next morning we got the DLR to Bank, then the Northern Line to Elephant and Castle, and then walked, or to be precise, bhangred (is that a verb?) to the Imperial War Museum.

Ferdy learnt a bit of Bhangra at school on Thursday

The boys know a lot about war. They know that the soldiers were called Storm Troopers, that the leader of the army was Darth Vader... Oh wait a minute, wrong war.

Despite the fact that there are more parallels between Star Wars and WW2, Ferdy had quite a good understanding about how different countries and people come to fight each other ('like in the Clone Wars, Mummy?'). And something that the IWM does so well is to encourage the visitor to try and comprehend what it must have felt like to sign up and fight at the front, and particularly to survive in the trenches.

Luckily for me Ferdy was too small to sign up.

Ferdy is under 5ft 6 inches

But Gil managed to do so well in his medical and fitness tests, his age and height were disregarded...

Ferdy was fascinated by the model of the trenches:

And there are lots of anecdotes and stories about individual experiences which intrigued the boys. Particularly evocative was our encounter with the silhouettes of the soldiers going about their daily trench activities (see top picture) and hearing the sound of the planes flying over and a tank starting up. We were a little terrified of the thunderstorm and gas attack but managed to find a space to shelter from the rain, unlike a lot of the poor soldiers.

tl clockwise: looking at an army tank; reading the Kid's Guide;
meeting the soldiers in the trenches; Tirpitz the pig.

Both boys also loved the stories about the roles various animals played in the Great War. Ferdy's favourite was the story of Tirpitz the pig, who was rescued by British sailors off a German cruiser that was sunk off the coast of Chile. The sailors named him Tirpitz (after the head of the German navy) and kept him as a pet.

When we'd had enough of WW1, unlike the soldiers, we were able to distract ourselves with coffee and crisps in the cafe, and then we also had a look around the WW2 gallery. I must confess to getting a little bored of the game we had to play repeatedly pretending we were a family sheltering from the bombs in the Anderson shelter.

'Tell us a story Mummy we're scared, we're scared'

On our way home, we read a great book about being in the trenches, and the boys were surprisingly tolerant about the fact that we had to sit on the floor for almost the whole journey; perhaps after their own experience of trench warfare they realised that there are worse things in life to have to deal with.

Two WW2 fighter planes joined us on our journey home