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