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.