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