A Home Education

We have been flexischooling for almost a year now and it has been pretty easy to incorporate Gil's needs into our Fridays.

Not this Friday however. Gil was ill (on his birthday poor darling!) and basically needed to be carried or on my lap all day. This meant we couldn't go anywhere, and everything we did had to be done sitting down plus I couldn't even put the telly on for Gil as there's no way Ferdy wouldn't watch it.

We are quite well set up for learning stuff (without Ferdy realising it) at home though, so, all plans scuppered and a trying day with an ill child ahead of me, with a small amount of trepidation I decided to entrust the day to Ferdy.

Set-up for home learning: the book and nature corner; the chapter
book shelf; the adventure corner; the Star Wars corner (I defy anyone
who says Star Wars isn't educational...)

Ferdy doesn't like to sit down very much, unless he is reading, looking at or listening to a story. Miraculously, he can then sit for hours.

So he decided to read some Star Wars books (and did some comprehension questions for his writing):

We have these brilliant
Star Wars workbooks

Then he proposed that I read: The Tale of the Castle Mice; How Many Legs; Mudpuddle Farm; The Big Book of Birds (and at his request we looked up some of the birds of youtube, including a Kakapo performing a mating ritual on a cameraman, and a puffin chick hatching).

His next plan was that we listen to the Moomins on his audiobooks. And then for his numberwork he suggested watching Numberjacks... (although he agreed on some Star Wars subtraction as well).

Getting a slight sense of how our day was panning out, I posed the idea of playing What's the Time Mr Wolf. Ferdy's been learning about telling the time at school so he rather enjoyed this. Especially when he won.

At lunchtime he made his own sandwiches.

And I have to confess that, after we had designed and set up a space scene in his bedroom and he had made a sun for it, Ferdy seemed to have not only lost any attention span (and me too from holding a sleeping/crying/coughing/crotchety 4 year old all day) but started wheezing, so we settled down to read more books and finally to watch Star Wars VIII.

I love the sun

Ferdy was ill and in bed all day on Saturday but having all recovered by Sunday (I'd been ill all week - for six and four year olds, illnesses last 24 hours, for 43 year olds, illnesses last 168 hours), we managed to carry out my original Friday plan which had been to go to the Lego exhibition in Derby.

A Lego sun