The Beasts of London

School was closed for polling this Thursday so we spread our flexi day over two days by doing our work on Thursday, and our activity on Friday. As it was polling day we decided to learn a bit about the election and what it means to vote, then both boys came with me to the polling station.

Ferdy later wrote his own manifesto.

...Help the animals and birds. I would go to Narnia and kill the baddies
and stop using plastic. I would read lots of books. I would make all
schools have flexi-schooling.

On Friday, we took the train to London and went the Beasts of London in the Museum of London, an interactive and immersive exhibition following the history of animals in London to how they live in the city today, narrated by the animals themselves. We met an eagle, lots of rats both during the plague and when they were being chased by dogs, we experienced what it must have been like in the circus through a sad elephant's tale and we heard the story of performing military horses whilst sitting on carousel horses.

Gil's favourite bit was chasing the pigeons which were projected on the wall and flew off when you ran towards them, and Ferdy's favourite bit was the conversation between a fox on the wall and a dog in his home and who had the nicest life (we concluded that the fox did). I was a still little too depressed about the general election (and the real beasts of London) to to have a favourite bit.

Luckily, we also went to see Michael Rosen in the atmospherically lamplit Old Vic on Saturday, who cheered us up immensely with his silly, irreverent and chair-falling-offly hilarious stories and poetry.

Bah! Humbug!

I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I feel a bit Scrooge-like about the amount of money people spend, and, particularly this year, the quantity of waste generated (dare I ask my family to wrap presents with recyclable tape rather than rendering the wrapping paper non recyclable with sellotape...? Am I brave enough to suggest looking for things second hand rather than going straight for brand new? Is it too grumpy of me to tell my children that polar bears may soon no longer exist if we carry on treating our world like this). However, I also love things like mulled wine (hic), mince pies, Lebkuchen, Christmas trees, and generally getting together with friends and family and having lots of fun/arguments..

This Friday, we went to see A Christmas Carol at the theatre.

Before we left, we learnt a little about one of the greatest storytellers ever, Charles Dickens. Ferdy has yet to discover his stories and I'm really excited for him as Dickens is truly a fave of mine. Because we've been learning something of the Kings and Queens of England (me included) this term, and because we put our tree up this week, we also learnt about the Queen who brought us the custom of decorating trees, Queen Victoria.

I told them a bit of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge on the way, which was lucky as I forgot my wallet and we had to drive all the way home to get it and subsequently missed the beginning of the play. We arrived just as Scrooge was declaring how 'every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own puddling'. A little how I felt at that moment...

The play, however was as rich and sumptuous as a Christmas pudding itself. It was dark and bleak and at times a little scary, and it was chirpy, heart-warming and fun. We laughed out loud, and we/I wept. The music, mainly Christmas carols played by the cast on a plethora of instruments, had us clapping and singing along. Both boys loved it even though the plot was a little complex for Gil who kept saying about everyone 'is 'im a ghost?'. Ferdy's new favourite character is Ebenezer Scrooge and he later wrote all about Charles Dickens.

As for me, well I came out feeling full to the brim with Christmas spirit, crooning carols and utterly in love with Christmas, Who cares about sellotape...?

God bless Us. Every one!

©Derby Theatre

Glorious Games Galore

It has rained all week this week but on Fridays we seem to often be blessed with good weather, so after attending Ferdy's Christingle service, we headed out to Sudbury Hall.

Sudbury Hall is one of our regular haunts and we can generally be found playing hide and seek in the playground, climbing trees in the grounds or scrambling up the chimney in the museum. But we don't often go to the hall itself (it's really borin' in there apparently). However, today an exhibition opened called Game On.

It was brill. You had to follow a trail around the house and in six of the rooms, there were over-sized board games to play.

We began downstairs in the Saloon with a walk on game of Dragons and Ladders. Ferdy won and Gil cried but luckily was quickly distracted by Scrabble in the Library in which we had to search out all the hidden letters and unscramble them to reveal a two-word name.

Upstairs we spent a long time in the Long Room: six tables were laid out with Lego with which we made animals and had to guess each other's creation (no one guessed mine was a tortoise). Then next door was Buzzwire which Gil excelled at. And on the same floor we played an exhilerating version of Cluedo where we had to work out, by reading witness statements, who had stolen the Lady Vernon's jewels.

In the Basement we Guess(ed) Who with the characters who used to live in the Hall, and finally there was a room full of even more board games to try out.

Despite some tears when games were lost, and a few cross words when we had to go around the house again searching for our toy rabbit and both the stamped gamecards which had been dropped, we had a lot of fun.

I think Ferdy may have been thinking about my indistinguishable lego tortoise when he wrote 'The terrifying torture of a tortoise', as an example of alliteration later.

Outlaw

Today was about taking from the rich, and giving to those in need. And no, I'm not talking about Labour's manifesto launch this week.

Running into Sherwood Forest away from Guy of Gisbourne

I'm talking about the Legend of Robin Hood.

We began by learning a little about the difference between myths and legends; primarily that myths have magic and monsters in them, and that legends are, at least partly, based upon reality. Having really enjoyed learning about Guy Fawkes at school, and also about Charles II's escape from the Roundheads, we also looked a bit at the historical figures who feature at the time of Robin Hood like Richard the Lionheart and his evil brother John.

On our way to Sherwood Forest, we listened to Outlaw, Michael Morpurgo's gripping re-telling of the legend of Robin Hood. Approaching Edwinstowe we reached a compelling bit in the tale where a pursued Robin Hood and his blind father, who he has rescued from the Sheriff of Nottingham, are fleeing over open fields and into the forest on horseback. I actually had to slow the car down and reassure myself and Ferdy and Gil that the Sheriff's men weren't really after us.

tl clockwise: Shooting arrows like Robin Hood; Major Oak; selecting arrows; balancing;
reading about Major Oak; hiding for an ambush

The woodland is much smaller than it would have been in the 12th century, but it still has many of the ancient oak trees, most famously the legendary 1,000 year old Major Oak. We learnt that these gorgeously gnarled hollow oak trees were often used as hiding places for Robin Hood and his mens' rations and sometimes themselves.

Of course we then had to play at being outlaws, ambushing the rich and giving money and food to the poor. We also had to select our arrows, practice hiding, collect firewood, forage for food and get married (Gil was Robin, Ferdy was Maid Marian).

Ready for an ambush

I did have to end the game which involved both boys jumping in front of unsuspecting dog walkers and (after a lengthy debate with each other about whether they were rich or poor - you can tell by their clothes apparently), demanding half their money.

Back at home I had written Ferdy some comprehension questions about the Legend of Robin Hood. What could be more succinct than his answer to the question about messages or morals we can take from the legend:

Sage words indeed. I know who I'm going to be voting for on December 12th.

Powerful nature

On grey days where the rain is monotonous, there is really only one thing for it: go to Derby Museum.

They currently have an exhibition on about Japanese woodcuts, so, following some column addition, we decided to learn a little bit about Japan.

I've realised that the best way to discover a new country with Ferdy (other than go to it) is to approach it via its animals and its folktales. So we learnt about Japanese macaques and flying squirrels, and read the story of the Monkey and the Crab and the Tale of the Nine Tailed Fox.

The museum is only about 1/8 of our new audiobook, Michel Morpurgo's Elephant in the Garden, away, and, as we seemed to be having an animal-ish day, we begun with some crafts (randomly making toilets for National Toilet Day) and studying more animals in the nature gallery.

Because the folktales part of the woodcuts exhibition was empty, both boys felt the need to run round and round shouting and playing chase, ignoring all pictures. Gradually though, as I (who had been ignoring my children) read out the prints' captions, they began to be interested. We read about enormous spiders, dancing goblins and ghostly warriors. We saw the spirits of giant frogs and one hundred night demons, and learnt the story the old woman of lone house who lured in travellers and murdered them in their sleep.

Looking at the giant frogs

After our immersion in the horrors of Japanese folk tales, it was off to the World Gallery for more stories and read a lovely book about a fragmented community who come together again through making stone soup.

Feeling hungry, we then went to the cafe for crisps and coffee and some unsuccessful origami. Sadly, I could not construct the desired Japanese macaque, in fact, I couldn't even make a simple origami bird. Ferdy didn't really mind though, I think he quite enjoys it when I'm a bit hopeless at something.

Our animal-ish day ended with writing some fun facts about animals, hot dogs (oh the irony) and a nature programme.

The house that saved a king

Ferdy came back from school this week really excited about the story of Guy Fawkes, and it struck me that, as a boy whose life is so enriched by stories, he may really enjoy learning about history.

It also linked quite nicely to one of the places on my list that we haven't been to yet, Moseley Old Hall, the house where King Charles II hid for a few days when fleeing the Parliamentarians, only some fifty years and two kings after Guy Fawkes's execution (one of the words Ferdy and Gil learnt today along with tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered..).

First we explored the grounds.

tl-br clockwise: mud kitchen; mapreading; treehouse; swinging; climbing; reading signs; hiding; more climbing; balancing

We followed the map to find and climb, what might be, the best treehouse. Ever.

We ran though the woods, balanced on logs, played Narnia, swung in the trees, insisted on walking around pulling a tree, cooked in the mud kitchen. And we hadn't even had our lunch yet.

Over lunch, I told them the story of Charles II (which I had looked up as, I am ashamed to say, I have rather a potted history of the kings and queens of England) and his escape, disguised as a huntsman over the fields to the Hall, where he was hidden in a priest hole whilst the catholic owners, Thomas and Alice Whitgreave fended off Oliver Cromwell's troops.

Both Ferdy and Gil were fascinated and off we went to find the priest hole, the bed Charles II rested in and the kitchen in which he ate.

tl-br clockwise: looking out to the knot garden; Gil/King Charles in the chapel;
eating at the table; holding a real gun and sword; wearing a (very heavy) Cavalier's helmet;
looking into the priest hole.

What I hadn't quite realised (but should have guessed, knowing my children as I do) was that we were going there to act out the story, scene by scene. Gil was Charles II, I was Alice Whitgreave and Ferdy was Oliver Cromwell's troops, and Thomas Whitgreave. Gil even insisted I wash Charles' bleeding feet. Luckily, there weren't many people at the house, and luckily it was a quiet game as we had to keep a tired and hungry Charles II hidden.

The game momentarily stopped for us to attend part of a guided tour led by the volunteers of the house, who were dressed in the attire of the time. Gil bravely asked one of the guides whether they still had King Charles' disguise and was very excited to hear that the volunteer was wearing a huntsman outfit similar to that which King Charles would have worn when on the run.

Ferdy thoroughly enjoyed it when Pancake (the guide, and yes, it was his name) requested that Ferdy be his assistant for some magic tricks. Pancake also thrillingly got out a REAL gun and two REAL swords for Ferdy and Gil to hold.

It was such a delightful day, I didn't even mind that our game carried on all the way home (our car was the horse and carriage taking Charles II to the boat and crossing to France).

For us, Moseley Old Hall is the house that brought a king to life.

Gil's depiction of Charles II (left) and Thomas Whitgreave.
Notice that Charles II is big because we learnt he was very
tall for his era.

The Day of the Dead

We don't shirk away from the topic of death in our house. In fact, it seems to enter most games being played and most discussions we have: 'When you die Mummy, I will be sad for a whole day'. All of us have varying theories on what happens after we die; that we come back as a selection of animals sometimes slugs (Gil) and that we become stars in the sky (Ferdy).

This Friday we decided to have a death day, partly due to the imminence of Halloween but also because we got sent a video by our friends who live in Mexico, of their shrine to all the people they had known in their lives. I really like the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead, in which they honour their dead relatives and friends by creating shrines with photographs and their favourite food and drink.

We discussed how different countries celebrate Halloween, and then we also talked about the people/animals we know who have died. As of yet, Ferdy's only actual experience of death is when my Mum's dog Rory died but I also told them about my lovely Grandmother, Amma, who died about 15 years ago. We read a few books tackling the concept of death including Goodbye Mog, Michael Rosen's Sad Book about the death of his son, and Waiting for Wolf by Sandra Dieckmann which beautifully covers the stages of grief a fox goes through when his wolf friend dies.

Then we had to cheer ourselves up with Ferdy reading us some Halloween jokes, and by making Halloween gingerbread.

'What do you call a fat pumpkin?'
'A plumpkin!'

'What plant likes Halloween?'
'BamBOO!'

Two of Ferdy's favourite jokes which he wrote for his writing today.

Naturally a day about death is not a true day about death without mentioning Star Wars, so we did some brilliant Star Wars yoga.

And concluded with some Star Wars maths and singing Happy Death Day..

Running up that hill

Thorpe Cloud - the hill we climbed

Somedays, you just have to climb a hill.

On our way to the Peaks we listened to our new audiobook, 'Wolf Brother', about a hunter gatherer boy from a wolf clan who has to make a long journey to the Mountain of the World Spirit with only his wolf for company. Ascending Thorpe Cloud, Ferdy told me about all other the mountains he knows about (including the ones in Archenland near Narnia and Angry Mountain and Wild Dragon Cliff on the Isle of Berk). Then he ran off to find the Mountain of the World Spirit, and was just a dot ahead of us for the rest of the way up and back down.

Ferdy is just visible at the end of the path

We eventually caught up with him right down at the bottom where he was doing some rock climbing.

Gil had been asking me all week about a book I have on the Matisse cut-outs and is very intrigued about him creating the cut-outs whilst sitting in his wheelchair and no longer being able to paint. So we looked at his cut out pictures and Ferdy wrote about his favourite one, and then we made pictures inspired by our morning out.

Our hills became volcanoes (because they are more fun) but hey, there would have been volcanic action in the Peaks at some point so why not?





It's often pretty tricky for Ferdy to concentrate on Friday afternoons, but not this Friday. Perhaps we should all run up and down hills a little more often.

What's for dinner?

My two boys are always asking me what animals eat, and who eats who. They love all the apex predators like T-Rex and great white sharks and crocodiles and seem to be totally unfazed by videos of Komodo dragons eating buffalo and lions devouring zebras.

And we have recently been learning about and listening to a lot about friendship so I thought it would be good to counter this with looking at the food chain and animal 'enemies'. Ferdy loved the BBC bitesize video and we learnt a little about simple food chains before we set off on the train to the Sea Life Centre to look for some of the different links in a food chain.

We've been fortunate enough to see two different types of penguins in the last couple of weeks: Humbolt penguins (from Chile) and Gentoo penguins (from Antarctica). We were also on the hunt for sharks (both boys), seahorses (Gil), plesiosaurs (Ferdy), clown fish (Gil), eels (Ferdy), seals (me), rays (Ferdy) and we found them all. The only thing we couldn't find was krill or shrimp which was at the bottom of our food chain worksheet. Oh and there was a dearth of plesiosaurs.

Most exciting was seeing the two seals: Boo and Pippa being fed fish (2nd on our food chain eaten by 3rd on our food chain) and Ferdy and Gil even managed to watch from within a glass box right in the heart of the seal tank.

Boo catches a fish

We seem to be unable to visit Birmingham without a stop off at the magnificent Central library so after completing our worksheets over lunch, and a few rides on the escalators we managed to spend a happy hour reading. Good books included: Bob's Best Friend Ever; Little Red; Harry & Hopper and The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon. It struck me that many children's books are primarily about friendship or predation.

Later on Ferdy wrote about food chains and then drew his own: algae, eaten by mosquito larvae, eaten by a mosquito larvae eating fish, eaten by a heron, eaten by an alligator. 

The State of Nature

On the day that a State of Nature report has been published showing that 15 per cent of our species are under threat of extinction and 41 per cent in decline since 1970, it seemed right to spend it outdoors appreciating and learning about the wildlife that we have left, and, as we always try to do on Fridays, thinking about what we can do to protect our wildlife.

Ferdy had also suggested we learn about hibernation (because the Moomins hibernate), although his suggestion that we practise hibernation by staying in bed all day was not one that I took up.

After attending harvest festival at school, we headed straight out to our local forestry centre, with The Wind in the Willows as our soundtrack.

We looked for evidence of animals and found rabbit holes, verified by Ferdy who found the rabbit poo nearby. Scattered all around the centre are wooden sculptures of animals and when we saw (or rode) on one, we discussed what it does in the winter. Ferdy thought that badgers hibernate because in Peter Rabbit on CBeebies Tommy Brock (the badger) is always having a nap, but Billy later told us they don't, they just sleep more (like us..).

A huge amount of time was spent in the bird hide, where we spotted squirrels gathering nuts (they don't hibernate) and a plethora of birds including nuthatches and long tailed tits. There is also an extensive guide to birds in the hide and we played a brill game where one of us had to say a bird and the others race to point to it. Even Gil could play if I told him the first letter. It was a bit noisy though and we didn't see many more real birds afterwards.

Our final task at the centre was to collect conkers; rollies (very round ones for good rolling), and cheek strokers (flat edged ones for stroking on your cheek).

This large bag of conkers was then used back at home to play a game learning about greater than and less than.

For Ferdy's writing today he wrote a letter to a new penfriend I have set up for him: Luna who lives in Spain and is the daughter of one of my friends (she speaks English, although it's a good incentive to learn a bit of Spanish). He even wrote some questions with question marks...

One of our few mammals that do actually hibernate is the poor hedgehog, I say poor because their species has declined by 95 per cent since 1970. We felt really sad about this; they feature in many of the books we read, but Ferdy and Gil may never see a real one.

Reading Wide-awake Hedgehog to us

A tremendous thing

Ferdy and Gil are really good friends. I'm not sure how long it will stay like this but currently, although they do argue, they seem simply to like each other and enjoy one another's company. They don't compete much, perhaps because Ferdy isn't very competitive (he is actually happy when Gil wins a race), perhaps because they have different skills. It also helps that they both love Star Wars.

Both boys really like Fridays because they have an extra day together; Gil has started to join in more with the work that we do and I'm sure his enthusiasm for it is rubbing off on Ferdy.

Ferdy doing some maths and Gil writing Meerkat and Lemur

Ferdy's learning about animals and their habitats at school at the moment so after some maths (Ferdy) and practising writing meerkat and lemur (Gil), we studied some other animals we were going to be meeting today at Peak Wildlife Park.

Gil suggested that we listen to the rest of Charlotte's Web on the way as it's also about animals, I hesitantly agreed. Hesitantly, because I needed clear vision for the drive and it's nearly at the bit which makes me need to brush something out of my eye... (spoiler alert: when Charlotte is left to die).

tl clockwise: No warty pigs; watching the Humbolt penguins; stroking his new wallaby friend;
reading about wild animals; being followed by pygmy goats; reading about the maneless zebra

The advantage of torrential rain is that we get places to ourselves, we are able to chat to the keepers and we really get to know and interact with the animals. The disadvantage is that quite a few animals don't want to be outside. We didn't see the warty pigs or the mainless zebras, and the lemurs only reluctantly sidled out of their hut for a bit of food (carrots). But the wallabies seemed quite content in the rain and even let Ferdy stroke them; we learnt that they like eating grass, leaves and shoelaces. And the pygmy goats in the African Village were impervious to the muddy puddles and happy to be herded by and follow around a cheeky little six year old.

We even got our own private talk from one of the keepers about the meerkats and what they eat (grubs, crickets, mice and carrots), where they live and why they are sandy coloured. Ferdy then gave the zookeeper a talk about when Andy of Andy's Safari Adventures met meerkats and what a meerkat alarm call sounds like, and Gil gave a little talk about his own camouflage trousers and how he wears them in the forest but not in the grass because they don't work there. I was a little tired at this point so opted not to give a talk.

All the information we'd gathered about where our new animal friends originate from was easily recorded on worksheets, diligently prepared by Mum, in the cafe later. And I couldn't argue with Ferdy when he wrote 'child' in the space for an animal found in the UK.

As well as being about animals, today was about making animal friends, and human friends, and being friends, and crying about book friends, and learning about friendship which, as Charlotte says, is a tremendous thing.

Never hurry and never worry

There are spiders everywhere at the moment; their webs are adorning our windows and decorating our drainpipes. They are building intricate web bridges around our garden gate, which means we don't dare open it.

Our new friend the garden cross spider

We love spiders, so when we started our new home ed forest school this week we were pleased to hear that the focus was going to be on these eight legged creatures. Before we left we thought about and retold stories we knew about spiders which included one of Ferdy's favourites about Arachne and Gil's Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider. In addition to this we learnt about Anansi the Spider, a hero of West African folklore who is a renowned storyteller and trickster and often outwits those more powerful than him with cunning and guile.

It was a bit of a drive so we decided to start listening to one of my favourite books about another ingenious spider, Charlotte's Web, on the way.

The forest school is set in an old orchard within an organic farm and there were activities galore. After exploring the woods, we learnt about all the different types of spiders we can find and went on a picture hunt, ticking them all off.

Other tasks included: climbing trees, searching for spiders' webs, making mud cakes, creating a spider from pine cones, relaxing in hammocks, swinging in hammocks, making friends, gathering firewood, making popcorn on the campfire and building complicated inventions from ropes and then breaking them.

Our favourite spider of the day, however, was probably Charlotte of Charlotte's Web. One of the many knowledgable things she says to Wilbur the pig, is that he should never hurry and never worry. We have been doing rather a lot of hurrying and worrying recently, so it seemed right to take a little of the wise arachnid's advice on this beautiful, autumnal day.

We've Got Dragons

We've got dragons in our house at the moment.

Ferdy has been complaining of tummy ache, and he's been a bit unhappy about friendships within school. He's also had a headache and sore throat, and been ill over the weekend so perhaps it's all been a bit too much. Apparently some of these things can be called dragons; something we learnt by going to You've got Dragons on Sunday which is a play about a little girl who has to learn to live with her dragons (a swirly tummy, anxiety, feeling prickly) by not ignoring or running away from them.

So on Friday we embraced our dragons.

We put together a pile of books about dragons and read them all.

We sang along to Puff the Magic Dragon more times than I care to mention.

We made Lego dragons.

Ferdy did some written comprehension questions about How to Break A Dragon's Heart.

We learnt about Komodo dragons, and watched a video about a Komodo dragon fighting a snake (Gil: 'why is a baddie fighting a baddie?').

In fact, the only thing that didn't involve a dragon was some numberwork games looking at tens and ones.

The Duplo blocks are our tens, and the Lego squares, our ones

Perhaps by staying at home, and not putting too much pressure on ourselves, and reading lots of books together, and making some time for chats, and having lots of cuddles, we may have also embraced our metaphorical dragons.

©Taking Flight Theatre Company