This bird hide is needed by the Imperial Army

We have been fortunate enough to have beautiful weather for every flexischooling Friday so far, and today was no exception. Ferdy has just finished doing the senses at school so we decided to go birdwatching/listening.

In the morning we downloaded an app with lots of different bird sounds on. I must confess to not being totally delighted about Ferdy's newfound ability to imitate a jay, a barn owl, a cuckoo and a nuthatch very, very loudly.

Seeing as he was feeling particularly vocal, we had a look at the diagraphs he has been learning this week (ie / ee / ea and e_e) and watched some phonics videos. We then wrote down words he could think of and categorised them under their spelling. He wanted to focus on words to do with birds and suggested cheep, tweet, tree sparrow, eagle, seagull. Oh and Pete...

Enough writing. Armed with 2 cameras, our new app, a bird guide and a notebook, off we went to the Attenborough Nature Centre, renowned for its over 250 bird species.

Drawing a duck

It's a bit of a drive so we are now on Volume 2 of Atticus the Storyteller's Greek Myths. Ferdy's current favourite is the story about Echo and Narcissus and has perfected his version of the Nymph's echoing voice 'Come over here, here, here'. Mine is the story of Tantalus; I love how some of our vocabulary is rooted in greek mythology.

On our arrival we heard a bird tantalisingly close to us (nice link H..) whose sound we couldn't identify and, with the help of the app, we worked out that it was a chaffinch. Ferdy was particularly excited that the chaffinch in the tree seemed to be chatting to the chaffinch noise on our app ('do you think that they are talking about Star Wars Mummy?').

tl clockwise: Ferdy takes a pic of a Speckled Wood butterfly; pointing out the wading birds we saw;
forgoing lunch for a large pile of books; playing in the mud kitchen.

We didn't see 250 species of bird, but we did hear a kingfisher (with help of our app), saw canada geese, mallards, swans, blackheaded gulls, crows, coots, robins, lapwings, a kestrel and were very excited to see the beginnings of a murmuration of (what we thought were) starlings. Ferdy then suggested we read some books and look up other migrating animals when we get home.

Watching the mini-murmuration

Can you see it?

As the day went on, sticks gradually became guns, bird hides became At-Ats and poor passers-by became Strormtroopers or Rebel Army. And Mum became Captain Phasma.

Apologies to those trying to watch the lapwings on the spit,
but this At-At is needed by the Imperial Army

The Centre has a great cafe with loads of wildlife games, books and information for kids, as well as a lovely garden at the back with a mud kitchen, bird feeders, bug hotels, pond and sand martin hide and we spent about an hour there (with coffee to help my transformation from Captain Phasma back to Mum).

When we got home, we looked up some videos of starling murmurations which we learnt are also called the Black Sun. We then got out some of our brilliant books (no library needed for these) on migration: Amazing Animal Journeys (which inspired us to look up videos on wildebeest migration, the red crabs on Christmas Island and the golden jellyfish on Palau); on birds: the RSPB book on Garden Birds, and a bird book with sounds (not that we needed them as Ferdy was able to do them very, very loudly). One of the things Ferdy loves most about Fridays is that we read at least 5 books together.

Relevantly (!) Ferdy then read to Billy (who is home by 3pm on a Friday) some of a book about dinosaurs. And we also did some division by sharing, which I think we should try with groups of starlings but we started with satsumas.

8 divided by 2 = 4

Our day was packed; we often start at 8am and finish at earliest 4pm, and I am knackered by the end of it! These Fridays are becoming quite special and unusual: they aren't like a weekend because we have a structure and theme to them and it's just Ferdy, Gil and I, and they aren't like the week because we aren't in the classroom (I'm no teacher!). But they are hard work and it's a challenge to find the right balance between doing some work and keeping up with what he's doing at school, and maintaining his interest and (most importantly), helping him to be happy.

Myths, Legends and Evolution

Ferdy is doing the senses at school this week. We played a senses game last week but he had requested an animals day this Friday so we thought we'd go to the zoo and look specifically at animals that are strong in each of the senses. He's also been looking at the creation story at school, listening to and reading Greek myths at home and (I'm not sure we've mentioned this), ingesting everything Star Wars and therefore seems to think that the world was made by a combination of God, Zeus and Yoda. To balance this out I thought we should add a bit of evolution to the mix.

We had been to our local library to look for books on evolution but disappointingly there were none so I managed to get a few second hand. We read The Story of Life on Earth and watched some videos, David Attenborough's one was the best; enough good visuals to keep a 5 year old interested, and clear and concise. Despite Ferdy being able to listen to stories for hours on end, and watch the whole of Star Wars I and IV, he has quite a short attention span for anything that he realises is to do with learning. The BBC also do some good short videos on evolution, and Darwin's theory on natural selection ties in rather nicely with thinking about animals and senses.

Ferdy then wrote 'I am going to the big zoo' in his Friday book. I had suggested he include an adjective in his writing this week and he was going to write interesting until he realised how long it was.

Our day at the zoo was a good example of how sometimes too much planning and doing too much doesn't really work for us.







I had made a worksheet but it was a rainy day and we couldn't find most of the animals on it! We also realised that it was far more interesting to spend time with a few animals, rather than trying to cover too much.

L-R: Penguins waiting for their fish; eating lunch; Ferdy demonstrates an Agile
gibbon; learning what Siamang gibbons eat and where they're from

We spent ages watching the Siamang gibbons (Ferdy was pleased that they are in the zoo when he realised that they are from Indonesia and could be eaten by Komodo Dragons - 'I know this from Go Jetters'), and with the Bonobos (perhaps my sons are familiar with a matriarchy...). Ferdy and Gil then chose to eat their lunch in the chimp enclosure and ignore the chimps.

We found the owls (an example of good hearing on our worksheet), and the snow leopard enclosure (good eyesight) but no bush dogs (smell), snakes (taste) or ferrets (touch). Despite the fact that it was raining and 10 degrees outside, when Ferdy suggested we have an ice cream to test their sense of taste, and pretend they were Siamang gibbons in the soft play, how could I not agree?

Ferdy even suggested completing the worksheet (I had given up on it) before he discussed with the soft play manager how much it would cost for them both to get in.

p2 of our worksheet

When we got home, Ferdy decided to paint Medusa (one of the myths we are listening to in the car), which seemed a rather apt end to an animals day with a bit of mythology, senses and evolution thrown in.

'Medusa's head after it has been cut off'

Use the Force, Luca

It began with a letter to Luca.

Despite loving stories and books (and when I say loving; I have a child who will listen intently to 2 1/2 hours of a serialisation of Jaws on radio 4 in one sitting), Ferdy does NOT like reading, and he does NOT like writing. So when I suggested writing a letter to Luca, the son of one of my best friends who lives in Mexico, Ferdy's acquiescence was a chance not to be missed.

Firstly we looked up Mexico on the map:

Gil pointing out Finland where we went this summer

 Next we wrote the letter. Ferdy wrote 14, for the date, and: 'Do you want to come to my Star Wars party.' (he isn't having a Star Wars party as far as I know, but it's a good way to try and get one). I was also so excited that he put a full stop at the end, I forgot to suggest a question mark. He does quite a lot of mirror writing (muchlike Leonardo da Vinci..) and found it quite funny when I pointed out he had invited Luca to his ytrap.

We then put the letter in an envelope and headed off to the post office.

Ferdy asked the lady for a stamp to Mexico (£1.45) and together he and Gil posted the letter.

Ferdy had requested that we go to the woods afterwards so we duly obliged. We took a picnic and went to Kedleston Hall to do the woodland walk. On the way we listened to the brill Atticus the Storyteller's Greek Myths which Ferdy and I loved, and Gil loved so much it lulled him off to sleep.

It was a beautiful autumn day and we did a nature walk, punctuated with a few light sabre / stick fights, through the woods. The trees are vast and impressive at Kedleston and there are loads of logs to play on / under / make dens with etc. We also learnt all about hermits (is it a crab Mummy?) and spotted fungi, caterpillar eggs, a hornet, a squirrel with a nut, a brachiosaurus (see pic), collected conkers and acorns and even saw a kestrel catching a mouse on the way home.

'Can you see the brachiosaurus in front of Gil?'

Ferdy did this assault course four times

In the cafe later (yes, a cafe always features on our days out), what could be more blissful than a massive pile of books and an ice cream. We even managed to do some maths when I found a Dr Seuss book and I don't think Ferdy noticed that we were doing subtraction..

A few things weren't successful today: Ferdy really did not want to read to me (we have agreed that every Friday he will read and write something) and in the end we settled on a few pages of a Star Wars book; he seems also to find it really hard to both think of how words are spelt, and then also write them, so I end up spelling things for him. He did go off and get a Star Wars book to copy how to write Star Wars (how many times will Star Wars feature in this blog I wonder..?) so maybe getting him to copy stuff might help? But to conclude, it felt like we'd had a good day, mainly because we all really enjoy being outside and the woods were quiet and slightly magical. And we're sure we saw Yoda too.

We are anticipating a reply by the end of term!

Great, kid. Don't get cocky

It seems totally appropriate, with Star Wars obsessed sons, to title this first blog with an appropriate Star Wars quote.

Things started well. Ferdy had requested that we make a volcano on our first day, so we found an experiment in the brill Kitchen Science Cookbook about how to make an erupting volcano with a chemical reaction between an alkali (baking soda) and an acid (vinegar). We built the structure on Thursday evening.

On Friday morning, after Ferdy read me a whole book (a first for us), we went out to take part in a wildlife club. Activities involved climbing trees, leaf and bark rubbing, birdwatching, making a campfire, digging, playing Star Wars (not part of the club's itinerary..), swinging in hammocks, balancing on tree trunks etc.

Practising some balancing

What's this mushroom?

And when he wanted an ice-cream, he counted out the money for one. Oh and £1 and two 10ps ('I know 10p because it's got a lion on it') for Mum's much needed coffee..

At home later we watched a great short film about Mt. St Helens and one for kids with basic info about volcanoes, looked at other words that end with the o/oe/ow sound and then completed our scientific experiment.

Ferdy called it 'Volcano Mars' as he learnt that the biggest volcano is on Mars ('can we go to Mars on a Friday please?)'

It was a good start but on reflection, I think it might be better to do any learning activities in the morning as Ferdy was very tired by the afternoon. I also think it might help to leave extra resources around and look at them when he's ready to; we had got some books on volcanoes from the library which he didn't want to look at on Friday but on Saturday when they were sitting on the table, he wanted to go through one of the whole Volcano books with me. It's worth noting too that he often doesn't respond to learning stuff in the obvious way with worksheets etc. Hopefully one of the good things about learning with Ferdy on a Friday will be working out how to incorporate his learning into things he likes doing. This is all very new, and some things will work and some won't, so we won't be getting cocky yet.

Ferdy's painting of the mushroom we saw