Lessons (un)Learnt

I have realised this week how much we go out. I have realised this week how much we rely on learning though activities. I have realised this week that shouting helps me but maybe not anyone else. I have also realised this week how we need structure in our day, even if we don't stick to it. In fact, having a timetable, and not sticking to it, has been one of the most successful things in our week.

Because Ferdy is not a sit down at the table and do worksheets kind of child, we have had to be creative in how we learn.

Some things work better than others; our weekly singing lesson with Uncle Al involved quite a lot of hiding from Uncle Al, and telling the time with a chalk clock lasted a total of five minutes. But our daily times tables stomp, which entails marching around the kitchen and singing along to the 2 and 5 times tables seems to be popular, as is Story Time with Granny (she is reading the Story of Tracey Beaker this week), Poetry with Roald Dahl and Michael Rosen and Lunchtime Story with Mum (Evie and the Animals by Matt Haig). And of course, we have listened to a vast amount of audiobooks and read a h*ll of a lot of books. We aren't doing much screen stuff; Ferdy spends a lot of time sitting around reading books so I am loathe to encourage even more sitting around. Although we are enjoying David Walliams' Elevenses and What's in the News? with Newsround, and I am also a big fan of 4pm watch Netflix and leave Mum alone for an hour...

Quite a lot of the really good things we've done, have been introduced by Ferdy or Gil. Like Ferdy's Story PE (this week the story was Chris Riddell's Once Upon a Wild Wood), where we read a book and do the actions.

Both boys have been thoroughly enjoying Evie and the Animals, so Ferdy proposed that we pretend we have pets and make Missing posters (in the book lots of peoples' pets go missing). Ferdy had a gecko Jumbo, Gil a dog Laz, and mine was a hippo called Harry.

And when we read about a painting competition in a Winnie and Wilbur book, the boys decided we should have one too.

Gil has noticed that we have a daily rainbow in our house, which led to us learning a little about refraction of light:

Gil and I are also on track with our letter a day project.

What have we learnt this week? Perhaps that it's ok to not stick to things. Perhaps that just because our world has got smaller, the experiences we have may not be less valid. Perhaps that Ferdy and Gil will probably tick the reading, writing and maths boxes, whether instructed to or not. And, as suggested by Ferdy, perhaps that Mum needs to take a deep breath, draw a bit more, and shout a bit less.

Home Truths

The birds are still singing, the cherry trees are still blossoming and we have spotted the first butterfly in the garden. Gil's cucumber seeds are sprouting and the sun is shining.

We are, however, feeling massively daunted, especially me, as Billy will (hopefully) still be working, at the prospect of five days of home schooling a week, particularly as I have a child who does NOT like worksheets or writing, does NOT like sitting down and most definitely does NOT like Mum teaching him. Our Fridays have often involved going out, something we will no longer be able to do, so somehow we are going to have to utilise the house and garden in a creative and will-he-cotton-on-that-we're-trying-to-learn-something ish way.. On top of this and just to make matters even more difficult, I'm not planning on much screen time either as Ferdy goes slightly mad and grumpy in front of a screen. Plus we don't have a very fast or efficient internet connection.

And I wasn't exactly filled with enthusiasm when we started a diary this week, and Ferdy's answer to one of my suggested questions, 'what did you learn today?', was:

All I can say is EEEEEEEK!!!!!

But we have some ideas: my opera singer brother is going to do a weekly online music lesson; my Mum (who is self isolating on her own in Dorset) will be doing story time with Granny; we will have a what's in the news? lesson; we have lots of books and audiobooks and it's the perfect time for planting seeds. Ferdy has also made some suggestions of his own: story PE (which involves telling a fairy story and doing various stretches and movements related to it eg going small like Thumbelina); a weekly Horrible Histories lesson; poetry with Michael Rosen; RE from all over the world and he wants some of our weekly topics to be deserts, grasslands, Africa, Narnia and magic.

And we managed to get 38 books out of the library this Friday before it closed; I am blessed with a boy who loves books more than he loves anything else (and this includes his parents and food).

Two for me, thirty-eight for the boys

And Gil and I have started a letter and picture a day project:

A is for apple, b is for bog roll. I wonder what c will be for...

So henceforth, this blog will be a summary of our week, its successes and also its failures. I'm not going to pretend we are doing great schooling when we aren't and I'm not expecting miracles. Ferdy is very unlikely to return to school able to write joined up, or be more attentive and he most definitely will not have written his own version of King Lear.

We'll do our best though, as Ferdy would say. And hey, he might dislike homelearning so much, he'll be desperate to get back to school...

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright

Two books have dominated the last few weeks for us: Running Wild by Michael Morpurgo (which we have been listening to) and The Giant Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. Morpurgo's book is set in the Indonesian/Malaysian rainforest and its heroes are orang-utans and an Asian elephant, and The Giant Kapok Tree features animals like a boa constrictor, a sloth and a jaguar who reside in the Amazonian rainforest.

After a learning a bit more about the different layers of the rainforest, and singing a rather catchy song about the rainforest, we went to the zoo to try and find some of the stars in our books.

Twycross has a large selection of apes and monkeys so we spotted black and gold howler monkeys, spider monkeys and siamang gibbons, all of whom would be found in the canopy. We also saw the male orang-utan, sitting high up on his perch, and our favourite apes, the thoroughly entertaining bonobos.

The Butterfly House contains many tropical butterflies so we felt like we were entering the understory of the rainforest in here. And we were intrigued to encounter leaf cutter ants as we were diligently washing our hands in the toilet, also inhabitants of the understory.

The zoo has a relatively new acquisition, a Sumatran tiger. In Running Wild, Will (the main protagonist) is very moved by his stand-off with a tiger in the rainforest, and recalls the William Blake poem he learnt at school which seems to give him strength. Ferdy really liked the part of the poem we read and was quite excited at the thought of us seeing a version of the tiger that Will had confronted. We only caught a glimpse of it and were struck by its size, but I also felt slightly miserable about how much it was pacing up and down, up and down.

Later on, we watched David Attenborough's Jungle, his documentary on our planet's hothouses and astonishingly, home to half of the world's species. For pudding we also had some palm oil free chocolate and Ferdy entertained us with his black sickle bill bird of paradise dance.

Running wild on World Book Day

When I asked Ferdy this Friday what he'd like to do to celebrate World Book Day (his proclaimed favourite day of the year apart from his birthday), he said for me to read him 1216 books.

So after some fractions with birthday cake (it was Billy's birthday) and apples, we read: A Friend Like Simon; The Chocolate Tree; Ian's Walk and The Great Kapok Tree.

We learnt a little about the Mayan rainforest last week when we went to the chocolate factory, so we all really enjoyed, and spent ages looking at the Great Kapok Tree, the story of a man who tries to cut down a giant Kapok tree in the Amazon rainforest. As he takes a rest, the animals who live in and around the tree plead with him not to destroy their world, citing its importance for many things including shelter, food source, rainwater soak and habitat. It helps that it's beautifully illustrated so we talked about the animal community and studied the different layers of the rainforest.

We're also just finished Michael Morpurgo's Running Wild (mentioned last week), and despite it being a different rainforest, many of the themes surrounding nature and the human destruction of it are the same.

After all that serious stuff, it was time for a bit of our own running wild.

tl-clockwise: balancing; playing with the dollshouse; the rabbit we spotted; playing hide and seek;
storytelling; through the story tunnel

Sudbury Hall is one of the boys' favourite places so we go there a lot. There is lots of space for exploring and running around, and there is a museum of childhood with a plethora of toys, and most importantly, more books to read. Heaven.

Gil was also excited to spot a rabbit, who didn't move (probably out of fear) when we went up to it, and when Gil realised that our storytelling session we'd booked in to at the museum, was based around a story about a rabbit, he was overjoyed and keen to tell everyone in the room about his rabbit sighting. He's definitely no longer the shy boy we knew a few months ago...

Later on, Ferdy wrote a rather elaborate tale about how the God of earth (named Wikit) brought bamboo to earth, but was challenged by a man called Greendo who disguised himself at Wikit and tried to get the people on earth to shoot arrows at the real Wikit. A story very much influenced by the Story of Chocolate we read, although slightly more complicated.

Including the books at Sudbury Hall, I probably managed about to read Ferdy about eight books. Just 1208 to go then...

Ferdy and the Chocolate Factory

Ever since Ferdy was about four, he has loved Roald Dahl. It began with the Enormous Crocodile and the Giraffe the Pelly and Me, and he then swiftly moved onto Fantastic Mr Fox, the BFG and The Twits. He even had a Roald Dahl party for his fifth birthday.

Food at Ferdy's Roald Dahl party

Most of this he discovered via audiobooks but now that he can read, his love of these books is being revived by reading them aloud. He's currently reading Billy and the Minpins to me, a book I've never read before.

Over half term we went to see Roald Dahl and the Imagination Seekers, a play inspired by the works of Roald Dahl about the invisible Wurblegobblers who are stealing all the words from the Roald Dahl stories. Only the ancient guild of the Tale Tenders, with the help of the children in the audience, can revive them..

We've also been thinking about chocolate recently (or perhaps not just recently) and Ferdy was interested in where it came from (and how the Romans could enjoy themselves without it), so it seemed appropriate to visit a chocolate factory. Before we went we learnt a bit about the Mayan civilisation and Cortes, who brought the cacau bean to Europe.

One the way, we read an extract of Boy about how Roald Dahl used to test chocolates for Cadbury's when he was at school in Repton, and how he imagined 'a long white room like a laboratory with pots of chocolate and fudge and all sorts of other delicious fillings bubbling away on the stoves, while men and women in white coats moved between the bubbling pots, tasting and mixing and concocting their wonderful new inventions'. (Boy by Roald Dahl p183)

Mouths watering, we had a very rainy walk to the chocolate factory.

Upon arrival, we entered into the south American rainforest to meet the original Mayans and Aztecs who discovered the cacau bean. We learnt about how they used to trade in cacau beans (we even managed some division using cacau beans without Ferdy noticing he was doing division..) and we ate some chocolate. We found out about the many stages a cacau bean goes through before it becomes a chocolate bar, we watched chocolate being tempered and we ate some chocolate. We travelled around a cocoa bean village and we ate some chocolate. We wrote our names in chocolate, we danced on chocolate sweets and splodges and we ate some chocolate. We even rode on a virtual rollercoaster through chocolate. Oh and we ate some chocolate, did I mention that?

Ferdy was also excited to spot Samual Pepys, who wrote about chocolate in his diary and he wanted to find out whether it was before or after the great fire of London (it was in 1657 so before the great fire).

That evening, we didn't eat any chocolate (the chocolate bars we were given have been hidden by mean Mum), but we did watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

On an ethical note, we are currently listening to Michael Morpurgo's Running Wild, a story about a boy who gets lost in the Indonesian rainforest and befriends the animals that live there. He is captured by an evil man who is slowly burning down the rainforest for his palm oil plantations. We were rather dismayed to realise that most mass produced chocolate contains palm oil, something naturally not mentioned on our visit to the factory, but definitely something to think about.