We are living in a material world

We attended Ferdy's Mother's Day service at school today, which was rather nice. Especially seeing as when it was his turn he said 'I love my Mummy because she gives me kisses', rather than 'I love my Mummy because she wipes my bottom', which he'd told me he was going to say. I had been on tenterhooks...

Me, according to Ferdy. Apparently he'd like me to 
have yellow hair. I have got long, (going grey) brown hair

The weather was beautiful so we went out straight afterwards.

Ferdy's been learning about materials and their properties this week so we decided to go on a materials hunt.

tl clockwise: fabric; paper; stones; glass; sand; bricks

We discussed that materials are man made and natural, and also how things can be man made using natural materials, and even found willow domes which are man made structures using living materials.

These willow structures also worked well as Luke's homestead on Tatooine

Sadly, plastic featured heavily throughout our materials search, but we had brought our litter picker (given to me by a friend for my birthday..), which also doubled up as a large shooter when Han Solo appeared.

The bears danced off through the woods

I was treated to my Friday outdoor show - today it was Goldilocks and the Three Bears - and over lunch we were read some stories, with actual reading...

And later on both boys really got involved with materials by immersing themselves in a pile of stones.

Back at home Ferdy printed up some of our pictures of materials and wrote about some of their properties (is sand, sandy?). 

When asked what we had learnt about today, Ferdy replied, 'adjectives and litter'. Hmm, ok, well, kind of.

(material)

Not doing things by halves

Our day began with some reading, and some fractions.

We learnt about halves and quarters, which seemed to suddenly be quite easy when chocolate buttons were involved. I decided then that we should learn about thirds too..

Ferdy's started rather enjoying reading; he has realised that reading might actually be useful when trying to find out what Beano, Dandy and other cartoon characters are saying.

It wasn't raining today and we haven't managed to get out much in the last few weeks so we decided to have an outdoors day at Shugborough Hall.

Balancing and climbing

Shugborough has a rare breed farm and a lovely farm museum all about the workers on a Victorian farm and their daily routine throughout the seasons.

tl-br: making up a farm story; looking at the different farm animal babies;
my show about Mr Gum; Ferdy as an Under Dairymaid

Ferdy became the Under Dairymaid and I was treated to a show all about Mr Gum on the Farm (don't ask why..).

Whenever we go anywhere on a Friday it's pretty quiet and we often get to chat to people; I think they're often quite intrigued when Ferdy explains about our 'not at school, school day' (or they're just being polite). Both boys have recently become much less shy and Ferdy told the staff about how much he'd enjoyed the museum.

But the abiding memory of the day was encountering Baxter the dog outside the cafe, and feeding him dog biscuits supplied by his very kind owner.

 

Ferdy enjoyed meeting him so much he took his picture, drew a picture of him and then voluntarily wrote 'Baxter is grey and furry. I stroked him and gave him a dog biscuit'.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..

At tranquility base

Ferdy's learning about space at school so we decided to take a trip to the National Space Centre.

Something I have realised about going to museums with a three and a six year old, is that the more often you go to the same place, the better the experience and the more they seem to get from it. Whenever they go to a new museum or exhibition, they race around not really looking at anything, bashing any button they see (without waiting for the consequences) and seemingly not taking anything in at all.

I was, however, slightly heartened by seeing school groups of older children doing much the same thing. It seems perhaps that when they are presented with so much stuff to see and ingest, they find it difficult to focus.

After about an hour of racing, bashing and not looking, things calmed down a little and we were able to concentrate on a few things.

tl-br: The Moon; in a space shuttle; on the phone in 1969; lunar training

Gravity wheel

We did some astronaut training in Tranquility Base and worked out what supplies to take to the lunar base (quite a lot of chocolate); we went into a wormhole and saw what happens to stars when they die; we played with ping pong balls on the gravity wheel and we even went up to the moon in a rocket (lift) and saw a real piece of the moon.

Over lunch we drew pictures of aliens (whilst a rocket took off behind us) and made up alien words using digraph ng (a mooging is a cow and a soong is a mountain in alien language), played picture consequences and Ferdy invented a game where we had to draw something that we'd seen in the museum, put it behind our back and the other two guess what it was. Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu and Kit Fisto must have been in a part of the museum I missed.

But we agreed that by far the best bit was the film we watched in the Planetarium called We Are Stars, which took us on a journey through space and time to show us the origins of life on earth and its connection to the universe. It was one of those immersive VR 360 degree films and felt so real we were all holding onto our seats in parts! It was utterly brill and Ferdy remarked on leaving, 'that film was even better than Star Wars I'. An accolade indeed.

Contemplating the universe?

The Hungry Caterpillar

Ferdy often wants to stay at home on a Friday but I always refuse as I think we won't get much done, plus I like them to get outside as much as possible. However, the weather was pretty bad today, and when Ferdy suggested we make a list of things to cover, I thought we should give it a go.

Our negotiated list (notice that the first thing completed was something I had to do)

We did actually manage a trip to the library as well and amongst others, read a brilliant book (three times) by Michael Rosen called Chocolate Cake. 

After choosing 23 books each and being allowed to use the zapper (it's like a Star Wars gun) to check their books out, we went home to complete our list which consisted of:

1. Reading Hansel and Gretel to us.

 

2. Doing some division by sharing with marshmallows.

3. Watching Numberblocks and writing down all the sums adding up to 15.

4. Making caterpillars.

Ferdy had found a caterpillar in the garden earlier in the week, and we also found a page in our RSPB Wild Times magazine about making paper caterpillars.

So they each chose a caterpillar from my Butterflies book. Ferdy's was a Camberwell Beauty and Gil's a Large Copper. Ferdy then suggested we then make chrysalises and butterflies to match, and then play a very long and complicated game of the Hungry Caterpillar (although I stipulated without the cake, pie, sausages, lollipops and ice cream). Ferdy then wrote his story 'Fest (sic) there is an egg, then a caterpillar, then a pretty butterfly'.

Ferdy's choice

They were so proud of what they'd made we even sent off pictures to the readers' pages of Wild Times. Watch this space for their debut in a national magazine.

Can you spot the chrysalises made by Yours Truly out of toilet rolls?