Oceans Apart

Before the world changed its course, and we only homeschooled on a Friday, we often brought what Ferdy was learning at school to life with a day out.

Last week (sorry no time for a blog) for the first time in three months, our lessons on countries in Africa culminated in a trip to the zoo and searching for African animals.

All pictures by Ferdy and Gil

This week the focus has been on the oceans and journeys around the globe, but we decided that doing a trip out to see the ocean would not be a good idea: a) because we live as far away from the sea as is possible in the UK and b) because we did not fancy parking on a roundabout and relieving ourselves in peoples' gardens.

So we didn't go anywhere.

But hey, surely we have now realised that we can experience places vicariously through other people and animals in books, songs and films.

Luckily, Andy was doing a wild workout on the beach so we joined him. We read some lovely books about oceans, (and we couldn't read about oceans without learning about the tonnes of plastic amassing within them) and Ferdy wrote a piece about giant starfish in Flotsam. We sang Moana songs from the South Pacific, and we also found a catchy tune about how to remember the names of the oceans.

Best of all though, for our journey, we decided to follow and discuss the directions of some of the migratory routes of five different animal species: a blue whale; a leatherback turtle; a monarch butterfly; a red crab and an African elephant.

Plotting the migratory routes

When Ferdy enjoys doing something, he immerses himself fully into it. Fascinated by footage of the leatherback turtles emerging from their eggs on the coast of Costa Rica, he decided to write a diary entry by one. When I pointed out perhaps he should write the names of the Frigate birds who preyed on the turtles, who was his silly Mum to argue with the retort that this turtle has only just been born of course he doesn't know what the birds are or what the name of the ocean is...  Vicariousness indeed.

The Kingdom in the Sky

Craving adventure this week, we started a new book of African Tales. Each story comes from a different country in Africa and is prefaced by facts about the country of origin.

Ferdy suggested that we learn ten facts about each country, find it on a map, look up favourite landmarks on Google Earth, then read the story.

First up was Namibia.

The boys were most intrigued that it houses the world's largest metiorite, the Hoba.

©Google Earth

We found some quirky videos about facts about Africa.

A day or so later it was Malawi, also known as the 'Warm Heart of Africa' (which gave me the excuse to have a boogie to the classic The Very Best's 'Warm Heart of Africa'; I must have lost the picture Ferdy took of this..), and finally the Kingdom in the Sky,  Lesotho, a small mountainous country surrounded totally by South Africa.

Ferdy's favourite story from our book was the one from Malawi about a boy called Makhosi who has to save his village with the help of a talking bull. On Friday, Ferdy wrote part of and dictated the rest of one of his own much loved tales from his audiobook, Nelson Mandela's Favourite African Folktales.

As retold, verbatim, by Ferdy

I was slightly stumped when Gil asked if we could go to Africa for our Friday outing, but Ferdy proposed we climb a mountain and imagine that we were in Lesotho.

So, not far away, we managed to find our very own kingdom in the sky. 

Bunster Hill: 1079 ft

The boys who have plenty of time

We read a beautiful book this week called Ocean Meets Sky, about a boy who goes to seek a place his grandfather has told him about and experiences a magical and dreamlike journey to find where the ocean meets the sky.

As well as this, our current chapter book is The Phantom Tollbooth where a boy named Milo ventures into a strange land in which everything is unexpected and not as it seems..

Most of our adventures recently have had to take place in our heads and at home, and it is such books that are inspiring and feeding our desire to discover new things and characters and words and places.

We have, however, been able to get out a bit more in the last few weeks and, although it is a bit tricky to find adventures as everywhere is rather crowded (and covered in litter) and everyone else is outside too, we found a stunning stretch of ancient woodland to explore called Hawksmoor. We had to drive for a while to get there, but Michael Rosen's Jelly Boots Smelly Boots audiobook was just the right length.

We've also managed a swim in a lake, to scoot around a lake, and to run up some hills.

On a day where we couldn't go out, we looked upwards and found dragon shapes in the clouds, learnt some of the very complicated names for clouds and we attempted to draw them.

The story of the Phantom Tollbooth begins when Milo, a bored and discontented little boy who is stuck in the monotony of life, finds a package in his bedroom addressed to, 'Milo, who has plenty of time'. In many ways, we have had plenty of time in the last few months; time not taken up by school, or swimming lessons, or meals out, or weekends away, or people visiting, or visiting relatives, or planning holidays, or going on holidays, and we are having to find ways to utilise this time in creative ways.

Sometimes this is hard especially when it rains and we don't have the motivation to do any work. It is hard when we wonder when this is going to end, and what life will be like when we can get back to normal and how on earth it's going to be possible to live, learn and work in an environment where many of our human instincts like hugging, and sitting closely, and high fiving, and comforting, and picking our noses, will be curbed.

But, having so much time is also great: Ferdy and Gil have made up so many different games, and each room in the house has become a gateway into another world or story (although I am less happy that our bedroom is where the game 'The Knights of Wonder' seems to have to take place). I applaud them for their lack of boredom and ability to create endless elaborate adventures from a combination of imagination, Marvel films and Mr Gum books.