Ruler

Sorry this blog is a bit late (and short!) this week as we've been distracted by the Easter hols, but it's for Friday 12th April.

Ferdy's been struggling to write his letters and numbers the right way round (he often automatically goes from left to right despite being right handed) so our day started with some practise writing 2s, 3s, 5s and 9s.

We then went out to do some measuring:

This daffodil is 30cm high

We measured how far each of us could jump.










Ferdy also told me that he'd been learning about toys from 'not now' at school so we went into the toy museum at Sudbury Hall. We often go to this museum and have favourite bits like: the chimney, which you can go up as a Victorian child chimney sweep would have done; the Star Wars collection (surprise, surprise); the book and dressing up room; and the film about all the toys which were collected by Betty Cadbury. But there's often something new too, and today we played for ages with the puppet show. My entertainment was a sophisticated performance about a princess who was actually a brave knight ruler, and a wicked wizard who died and the knight then hid inside him to capture the dragon. I love a story about a strong female ruler.

Happy Easter!

Back on Friday 3rd May.

Tales of the Unexpected

There are some days where I thank whomever looks down on us - Yoda, Zeus or most recently Loki in our household - for our Fridays. They are often hard work, sometimes disappointing and periodically we all fall out... But on occasion things come together beautifully and we have an unexpectedly blissful and productive day.

Looking at the trams

The day commenced by looking at the ten times table. Ferdy recently said to me that he doesn't like that wobbly cross next to the numbers, which I think means he doesn't like times tables. Often when he doesn't like something it's because he doesn't understand it so we tried to punctuate the day with times tables without him really noticing.

The perfect bridge for playing Billy Goats Gruff

Our trip out today was to the Crich Tramway Village. As usual we first went to the playground.









We then caught a tram to Wakebridge to investigate the sculpture trail.

Wow. It was great! A lovely trail through the woods where we encountered loads of different unexpected and magical creatures.

At a clearing we found a mushroom circle and some giant dominoes. Ferdy invented a game where we had to add up the dots on the dominoes and only then, could we step onto the next one.

And there was a spiral of rocks where we had to get all the way to the middle without touching the ground.

After lunch we checked out the museums, most fascinating was the huge pile of horse poo and wee collected from the streets in Victorian times.

Left: poo; right: large jar of wee

That was a great day, I was told on the way home. And later on the great day got even greater when Ferdy and I went to see the Jungle Book at Derby Theatre in the evening. It was brill but is another story which involves chanting 2 and 10 times tables in the taxi, Magnum ice creams and Prosecco. Need I say more.