Fred the Frog's Adventures

Most good days begin with a story. Ours began with two.

Today's first book was Fred the Frog, a stone frog who lives in the Chinese garden at Biddulph Grange Garden. One moonlit night he comes to life and goes on an adventure around the garden with his friends, Bill the Buffalo, Dragon, Chi the Dog and Sam the Squirrel.

And because we were going to be visiting the Chinese garden, and it is currently Chinese New Year, our second story was the story of Nian, the Chinese monster and origin of the story behind Chinese New Year.

Then it was time to head out to China and to meet Fred the Frog and his friends.

"Look China is this way!"

The Victorian Biddulph Grange Garden is a child's paradise. It features tunnels, bridges, steps leading up towards little follies, ponds and lakes teaming with fish, stepping stones and a temple. One garden leads to another, sometimes through passageways and one even via a topiary pyramid.

Meeting Bill the Buffalo and Dragon

Through some upside down tree trunks, we found China, Then it was off to Egypt to find Thoth.

Left: the friends find Thoth's temple. Right: Ferdy finds Thoth's temple.

Thoth is a baboon dog and not dissimilar to Nian, according to Ferdy.

It took a long time, and oodles of tenacity from Gil (Ferdy and I were willing to give up), to find Fred the Frog, but eventually, after clambering up countless steps, running in and out of tunnels and finally resorting back to our book to check what his surroundings looked like, we did!

We also discovered fossils in the geology gallery, and got very lost so met all of the animals quite a few more times.

Eventually we found the cafe where Gil and I were treated to songs about the 2, 10 and half of the 3 and 5 times tables by another rather strange creature.

One of Fred's friends we hadn't been able to locate was Chi the Dog, and upon being informed by one of the guides that Chi had been sent away for repairs, Ferdy announced that he was going to write a story about Chi's adventures.

Chi's Adventures: After Chi ran away, he got on a plane at Heathrow Airport. The aeroplane was going to Africa. It landed; Chi ran out and found himself in a jungle. There were parrots, monkeys, lizards, chameleons and everything that you see in a jungle. Suddenly a lion came through the bushes, it sprang at Chi and... just wait and see.

Ferdy goes to work

By Guest Writer: Billy (Daddy)

Now that Ferdy is seven, we decided it was high time he started to make a contribution to the household bills. So, without further ado, he was packed off to the family cardboard tube business for his induction day.

First of all he needed to brush up on the basics like checking the tubes are the correct size. We may have to find a slightly smaller tape measure at some point because he could only just lift this one.

Next it was time to learn the correct terminology for the parts of a circle, (i.e Diameter, Arc, Radius etc.)

There is a lot of high tech equipment at the factory to get to grips with. Ferdy can be seen here mastering the latest in word processors.

Before we knew it, tea break was upon us and it was imperative to learn about putting ones feet up and how to replenish our energy with raisin bread.

As with all factories, Health and Safety is paramount and it is vital learn a few dos and don'ts. Running on the factory floor for example is frowned upon, even when a pee is about to come out. Also, it is not a good idea to walk two inches behind your Daddy and not pay attention; this can lead to crashing into Daddy's back. Learning from your mistakes is important as was demonstrated in this instance. Eventually.

Top: glue machine, bottom left: makes the tube go round,
bottom right: the paper at the start (photos and captions by Ferdy).

After all that excitement it was lunchtime. Employees are not normally supervised when on breaks but it was noted that Ferdy ate his pudding first, which is most unconventional, and may require some monitoring in the future.

With lunch over it came as a pleasant surprise to Ferdy, that on Fridays we finish at 2pm so there was just time to pack away the untouched writing books and maths puzzles before racing off home (where he was most unhappy to find that the writing book made an unwelcome re-appearance). This working lark isn't so bad.

"What was the best part of the day Ferdy?"

"When I went inside the delivery lorry."

Shifting shapes

Our day commenced with a shapes game. Ferdy's learning about 3D shapes at school and, despite putting maths in a list of things he hated about school (he's had a bad first week back so we decided to compile a list of things he hated and things he liked about school), he proclaimed that his hatred of maths doesn't include learning about shapes.

We sang a song about shapes, and we had to run around the house collecting the relevant shapes.

Spheres, cylinders and cuboids were easy, cones and cubes less so. We had no luck with a tetrahedron, and no Gil, my head is not a square based pyramid.

We attempted to draw some 3D shapes.

Ferdy also did some comprehension questions about Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which we have just finished reading. He seems to rather enjoy answering questions with a book by his side, and is getting rather adept at finding the part in the book which corresponds to the question.

Hard work completed, it was time for some shape shifting and some shape searching at a trampoline park.

tl-bl clockwise: spheres; cubiods; a cylinder; almost a square based pyramid

This was one of those rare days where everyone was too busy to go trampolining so we had the whole park to ourselves. For one glorious hour we could use all the equipment with unbridled freedom; we even had the ninja warrior assault course opened up for us. Ferdy taught himself some new moves, including landing on his bottom and then back onto his feet, Gil practised lots of balancing and they could both race, leap, jump, bury themselves, fight, slide, climb and bounce to their hearts' content. I even became ever so slightly obsessed with mastering the tightrope (I only managed half way across much to both of their delight).

On our way home, we started our new audiobook, Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. Both boys were thrilled to make the acquaintance of Pantelimon, Lyra's daemon and an excellent shapeshifter.

Ferdy's been finding this week back at school really hard; perhaps due to the excitement of Christmas, and the fact that we've seen lots of friends and family so it's seemed a long time away from school, but passed very quickly. He's very cross and grumpy with the world and no one has been able to cheer him up.

Fingers crossed for him that next week is a better week.