Child-led learning

It was a Gil only day this Friday as Ferdy went in to school.

'Ahh, I'm looking forward to a nice and play-oriented day', I thought to myself on Thursday evening.. 'What we doin' tomorrow', demanded Gil whilst I was planning the drawing I might start the next day. 'What do you want to do, poppet?', I asked. 'First, pleeeease can I 'ave some worksheets', he replied, 'I want to do letters a, b, c, t and k'. He then pointed out the ones he'd like on Twinkl which looked far too tricky to me.

After breakfast on Friday, I made myself a cup of tea and got ready to help him with his worksheets. 'All done', he declared. 'Now what we doin'?' I had a look and yes, he'd somehow managed to complete them all before breakfast. Realising the pace of the day had slightly changed, I gulped down my cup of tea and we moved on to some number work learning about adding up to 6, 7 and 8 please..

I'd been thinking we'd do this outside but it was raining so Gil suggested doing it with Lego. We got two bowls and Gil had to work out the different number sentences adding up to 6 and 7. It worked really well and he thoroughly enjoyed it, even pointing out that adding 0 was a number sentence too (I had forgotten that one).

Next he suggested we learn about autumn so we watched a lovely video about the changing seasons, read a few books about migration and then headed out for an autumn walk to search for different autumn colours.

Then it was time for a nice chilled out lunch. But alas, Gil doesn't have chilled out lunches. It was actually time for Gil to beat Mum at a memory game and proudly boast to the cafe owners about what a loser his Mum is.

At home later, I suggested that he had worked so hard today so might like to play some Lego or play for a little bit (and give Mum a rest). No thanks, he decided that we needed to play the Shopping List game (which he won), followed by a drawing from Art for Kids, and had Mummy forgotten that she'd promised to do some leaf rubbings?

I'm a fan of child-led learning, I think it instills confidence in a child and am often surprised how, when left to their own devices, my children come up with their own brilliant and creative ways to learn about the world around them. 

But as I collapsed on the sofa at 4pm, I wondered whether child-dictated learning may be a more suitable term for our experience today..

Once upon a pyramid - invertebrate cats and hibernating hedgehogs

 For our Mum-reads-aloud book we are reading the Animals of Farthing Wood at the moment. It was written in 1979 but its theme, about animals who have to leave their homes because their wood is being bulldozed down for more homes to be made, is strangely pertinent.

The vocabulary in the book is quite sophisticated (for all of us) and a lot of words need explanation. So we decided to get out the dictionary this week and look up some of our new words. Ferdy then wrote them out on some new paper which we are trying in order to help his letter formation.

We like animals to be the theme of the day; Ferdy is learning about vertebrates and invertebrates at school, and Gil is learning about autumn and hibernation, so where is the best local place to go to see animals? No, sadly not the woods, but Derby Museum..

Derby Museum is a place we often use as our Friday classroom. Ferdy is also studying the Egyptians so we started with the Egyptian mummies.

We got a lecture from our impromptu tour guide (Ferdy) about how people were put in bandages before being placed in the coffin, about how the head was a jackal head and how kings were buried in pyramids. To our great astonishment we even found a mummified cat.

In the nature gallery we discovered vertebrates and invertebrates, and Gil looked for animals that hibernate.

We even spotted a hibernating butterfly (a red admiral), and we also talked about the migrating butterfly, the Monarch.

Later on, Gil drew a hedgehog with the legendary Art for Kids, and Ferdy taught him to add up to ten on his fingers and wrote and dictated a story about an Invertebrate Cat. Thanks to Derby Museum, we could bring together English, History, Science and Art, not to mention the Maths we used to work out how much crisps cost in the cafe, and the Music we listened to in-between times tables at home.

A gloriumptiously good day

 In our household, we love a literary pilgrimage. We have done a fair few in our flexischooling career, be it transporting ourselves off to the land of fairytales, looking for the Lorax, meeting some of our literary heroes at Hay on Wye, celebrating Christmas with Michael Rosen and Charles Dickens, and we've even been known to travel all the way to Denmark to find Hans Christian Andersen..

Arguably though, one of the constants in Ferdy's long life of loving books has been Roald Dahl. He has been listening to the audiobooks since he was 4; he started reading with the Magic Finger and now reads them all and our latest, which we listened to this Friday, is Boy.

So when I found out that the museum had reopened, I decided we should take a trip there. We have no idea how much longer these amazing and vital places are going to stay open or survive.

Having travelled there the night before, our early morning countryside trail entailed tramping through the woods which inspired stories like Danny the Champion of the World, Fantastic Mr Fox and Billy and the Minpins. We encountered Wangdoodles, Snozwanglers, Hornswogglers, Vermicious Knids, had to run away from the blood suckling, tooth pluckling, stone chuckling Spittler (Gruncher for short), and even found the orchard and farm belonging to one of Ferdy's favourite baddies, Mr Bean (the lean one who only drinks cider in FMF).

Gil enjoyed leading the way on this walk by following instructions on our map and not getting too biffsquiggled. It culminated in us tracing the BFGs footsteps to Roald Dahl's grave where we had a little chat with the great man himself..

After some scrumdiddlyumptious food in the cafe, we went to the museum. Many things are a bit miserable at the moment; places seem like ghost towns and no one seems to be having much fun. But it is rather nice to have your own personal tour guide (a splendiferous lady named Helen who reminded us a little of Miss Honey) and a whole museum to yourselves.

Both boys churgled to see the mouse in the sweet jar from Boy and delighted in seeing Roald Dahl's actual writing room and to work out what character they were according to their height (Ferdy was George, Gil was an Oompa Loompa to his annoyance, I was Willy Wonka). We learnt loads of new stuff about Roald Dahl, (although Ferdy seemed to know rather a lot, occasionally taking over as museum guide) like how he had loved the Beatrix Potter books, how Charlie from the Chocolate Factory had originally been made of chocolate, how Oompa Loompas were very nearly called Whipple Scrumpets and how the BFG was based on Roald Dahl's very good friend with big ear lobes who had made his writing shed.

Gil particularly loved the ball of tin foil Dahl made from every chocolate wrapper he had eaten, and Ferdy very much enjoyed showing off all his knowledge of the characters in the stories (he was able to answer every question correctly) and stomping, flying and oompa loompering around the museum between the rooms.

On the way home, we listened to the rest of Boy and later we watched the whizzpoppingly excellent Fantastic Mr Fox and spotted Roald Dahl's chair and ball of tinfoil in Mr Fox's office in the film.

The day was made of zozimus for all involved.

Ferdy's trick taken from Matilda's book of genius

What's in the news today?

 In the olden days, when I was young and cool and hip and before I became a world weary mother, I worked in the newspaper industry. So when Ferdy asked if we could make a newspaper this Friday, I became a little (over) excited. The chance to be an editor again had arisen...

After school worship online, we were just in time for the 10:30 news meeting where news story ideas were proposed to the Editor. Our research consisted of reading a few daily papers and choosing our favourite stories, watching Newsround and finding out about how best to approach putting together our paper.

Chief reporter writes a list of all the important stories of the day

We decided we needed an exclusive story so contacted one of our sources about some tree felling happening nearby, and then out we went for some on the ground reporting.

Here's The Adventure Paper, all articles written and dictated by Ferdy and/or Gil and all pictures drawn and taken by Ferdy and Gil apart from the final illustration.

Our interview with retired local resident, Granddad, took place at 3pm so we only just made our 4pm press deadline. Ferdy and Gil found it hilarious that this was called 'putting the paper to bed'.