The Swap Shop

Today, Ferdy and I made up a game called The Swap Shop. This entailed me giving Ferdy a number, he then had to halve that number using dienes and two bowls and write the number sentence. Sounds a bit boring? Not when you have to visit The Swap Shop, run by Mrs Swap Shop who spoke a bit funny and had a weird sounding doorbell, to exchange your 10 block, 100 block or 1000 block for 1s, 10s or 100s.

Mrs Swap Shop was also a bit wayward and often tried to cheat Ferdy out of a few blocks so he had to be very alert. A simple game, but thoroughly enjoyable..

In the meantime, Gil worked on a few worksheets. He likes to do these on his own with the occasional interjection by Ferdy (practise saying 'd', Gil by saying 'a dog dug a dragon's dung') and definitely no help from Mrs Swap Shop.

We've never really done a lot of work on worksheets on a Friday but Gil seems to love them so who am I to argue? Ferdy then also did some of his own, as well as some important work writing about a day in the life of Bananaman.

Ferdy then decided it was time for Gil to learn about ordering and recognising numbers 1-10 so taught him a numbers game.

Gil won, much to my and Ferdy's annoyance..

With Akimbo and the Lion (Gil had requested that we listen to something about Africa as he really enjoyed learning about Africa in school this week) as our soundtrack, we then had time to head out to do some afternoon activities.

We had loads of fun doing the Activity Trail which we fortuitously had all to ourselves. Both boys, who are generally cautious, were fearless on the rather too high rope bridges and found it hilarious that I had shaky legs at the end. Gil also wanted to do the Sensory Trail (it's much easier to guess what things are if you look inside the boxes and it's still using one of your senses actually Mummy), and it was apparently amusing seeing Mum get lost in the labyrinth.

Later on everyone flagged a bit. Two weeks back at school seems to be taking its toll and we've had to wipe off six month's worth of dust from the calpol bottle this weekend, so when Gil selected a pile of books for Mrs Swap Shop please to read, no one complained.