Message in a bottle

Museums are brilliant for kids these days. Centuries ago, when I was little I remember moaning every time my Mum took us to museum but today there is so much to interact with and enjoy. 

Some museums however, are even better than brilliant.

Gil's been loving his letter writing topic at school, and Ferdy's focus this week has been to form his letters in such a way that we might actually be able to read some of his splendid ideas, so a long awaited trip to the Postal Museum in London came at just the right time.

Our day at this unique place began with a ride on the Mail Rail which entailed a journey beneath the streets of London through hidden tunnels in the old mail train, used to transport all the post citywide. We pretended we were letters: Gil was a letter to Santa and Ferdy a letter to Dave Pilkey and were treated along the way to information about the 100 year old tunnels. The power cut was a little scary, although obviously we guessed it wasn't real...

But the adventure was just beginning. We boarded a travelling post office in order to sort the mail; became operators of the trains moving around the Mail Rail network shunting cars east and westbound through Mount Pleasant; met the Jolly Postman and a piece of post over 300 years old and learnt about how when letters started being sent, you had to pay to receive the letter, rather than send it, and how MPs could send and receive letters for free, yet the general public had to pay (one rule for them... hmm sounds familiar). We designed stamps with our own faces adorned with big lips and crowns; dressed up as an exceedingly dashing Mail Coach Guard (Gil) and a slightly cheeky Boy Messenger (Ferdy); joined the sorting office team gathering parcels from postboxes and sorting them at the depot, and Gil even managed to post the letter he had written to Santa.

Absolute best of all however, was the pneumatic tube transport system where a tube containing a handwritten message is sent whizzing from one side of the museum to the other and back again with the message having been read and replaced with a new one. Ferdy and Gil could have spent all day on this, especially when some other kids joined in. Ferdy's writing has never been so clear and legible.

Birthday research

 Today was about research.

Gil's been learning about animals, where they live and what they eat, so (after some maths on shapes) he chose five animals (lemurs, snow leopards, penguins, rhinos and orang-utans) to learn about. He discovered how to use an index in an animal encyclopedia, how to look up videos on youtube (supervised by Mum) and how to compile the information he'd acquired in note form.

Ferdy has been doing explanation texts at school and (after some rounding and subtraction in maths) chose today to research Leaf Cutter Ants and what they do with their leaves.

But really, the best way to learn about animals, is to see them. Sadly, we couldn't go to the rainforest, and it had to be Atherstone rather than Africa, so off we went to Twycross Zoo.

I wouldn't usually suggest doing research in the ladies toilets, but at Twycross, it is the best place to study Leaf Cutter Ants.

We noticed how initially they weren't carrying any leaves, but then quite a few of these reddish brown creatures started walking along the rope with large pieces of greenery. These were bigger ants and we spotted three different sizes; some were even carrying berries. Ferdy informed us that there can be over one million ants in one colony (and I noted that he hadn't just been watching Monster Bug Wars on youtube).

Deciding that it was best not to eat our lunch in the toilets, we then set out to explore the rest of the zoo and, despite the cold, wet weather, managed to see three out of five of Gil's animals: the penguins were being fed herrings and the rhino had a calf with it, so Gil was able to add those facts to his information sheet.

Later on, however, after Ferdy had put all his research into a piece of explanation text and Gil had written the diary of a lemur (he was dismayed to see the the lemur enclosure was closed as lemurs can get coronavirus too), the real research began...

It's no mean feat reading three of your birthday books simultaneously, but when you've spent most of your ninth birthday working hard and not looking at your presents, it's necessary.

Ferdy enters the scene, stage left.

 

We love the theatre. We've written about quite a few of our trips on this blog; one of our favourite places is Derby Theatre where our early flexischooling days began with Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Horrible Histories Deaf and Dead through to A Christmas Carol and The Jungle Book and we have plans to see Treasure Island at Christmas

This term, Ferdy is going to be learning about the features and layout of play scripts and using stage directions in text, so, imagine our excitement when the lovely backstage staff at the theatre agreed to let us have our own personal visit to discover how the stage works.

We were treated to our bespoke tour by Head of Lighting and Sound, Ele, who told us all about how the weight rigging system works enabling the cast to fly; how the set is brought up from the carpark in a gigantic lift and sometimes assembled in one day and how the set and props are built. We had taken some vocabulary cards with us with words such as stage left, backdrop, set, wings, props and auditorium written on them and Ferdy then went around the stage, placing them in their correct positions. He was also allowed to act out a little sketch on the stage about a clumsy man who kept slipping over (there was a slippy covering on the stage to flatten it out).

Our new friend Ele then took us into the control room and explained how the sound and lighting work, and we agreed that it was useful to have a loud voice like Ferdy's when you are acting. She had engaging answers for all Ferdy's questions like what would happen if someone was fast asleep in bed when they should be acting on stage, and Ferdy found it hilarious that once one of the child actors had been unable to act and the only person who could stand in for him was an adult... Ele didn't even mind when Ferdy requested she name all the characters in Treasure Island, and seemed to quite enjoy his idea that instead of her afternoon task of cutting the stage covering, she should go and write her own script for Treasure Island.

Inspired by his newly acquired knowledge of the stage, Ferdy later wrote a play script based on a Billy Whizz story in the Beano, and we built a stage set and made characters with which he could perform his play.

We are so grateful for this amazing opportunity, thanks a million Derby Theatre!

Beavers Unleashed*

Our day about beavers began on Thursday evening when we rushed back from school to watch a second pair of beavers being released by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust at Willington Wetlands.

The next morning (after our spellings, handwriting practice and maths), we gathered information to help us go and spot the beavers. With videos, we watched them building dams, living in lodges, gnawing bark and tending to their kits, and learnt how their reintroduction can help to reduce flooding, improve water quality and help create habitats for other animals. Using our map of all the rivers in the UK, we searched for the Trent and also used this as an opportunity to refresh Ferdy's river and lakes topic using vocab like springs and meander and source and look at where rivers start and how they eventually flow downhill into the sea ('because of Isaac Newton, Mummy').

Ferdy's been learning about character description at school and Gil's been doing adjectives so, in preparation for our writing later, our next task was to brainstorm all the adjectives and other vocab we had amassed relating to Eurasian beavers.

Spot Mum's typo...

Armed with binoculars, camouflage trousers and sandwiches, we set off to find these elusive, ecosystem engineers.

It was a long and muddy walk down a track, but we had read to search for evidence of them such as gnawed bark and branches, footprints and poo. Obviously, we saw all these things... Ferdy must have seen about 73 beavers including those from the Narnia books.

Gil is sure he saw a beaver in the water; he has the sharpest eyes of all and there was definitely something swimming around so we have decided to return at dusk one evening and try again.

Later on, Ferdy wrote a beautiful character description of these 'nocturnal, silent mammals', and Gil wrote a newspaper report by Ripoter Gil about the 'very, very, very, very dirty' beaver he saw and how Mummy 3/4 believed him.

*Gil's headline title is influenced by Dogman.

Plant Power

 Conveniently, both boys are learning about flowers, plants and place value this week at school, so it didn't require a huge amount of creative thought to plan some place value maths work and a visit to the botanical gardens.

Following some spellings and handwriting practice (Ferdy's handwriting seems to have somewhat deteriorated over the summer, perhaps due to six week without writing a single thing), we played Place Value Guess Who. It's self explanatory really: Gil's numbers were two digits and Ferdy's, four digits and we had to guess each other's numbers by asking questions like 'what is ten less than your number?' and 'how many hundreds does it have'. They could use dienes and column addition and subtraction if needed.

Our new audiobook is The Secret Garden so we listened to it on the way to the botanical gardens. I had forgotten how disagreeable and unpleasant poor little Mary Lennox is in the first half of the book so we talked a bit about how sometimes people are mean and grumpy to others because they are miserable and unhappy themselves.

After a miserable drive (which made Mum grumpy), the gardens were truly a breath of fresh air.

I had been worried that it would be difficult to capture their attention with plants and flowers, but I hadn't considered the carnivorous plants. Ferdy was enthralled by the Venus Fly Trap (middle picture) which we had to test out with bits of leaf and biro tips, and Gil was delighted to see pitcher plants in their natural habitat (we have some at home gobbling up the flies in our kitchen).

In addition to learning about these silent hunters, we befriended peacocks (Ferdy named one Dusty), Koi Carp, bumblebees, parakeets and squirrels; watched chrysalids hatching in the Butterfly House; balanced on rope bridges and climbed up the oak tree and conifer towers, looked at the autumnal blooming flowers like cosmos, echinaceas and rudbeckias (ok, this was more Mum than Ferdy and Gil who were more interested in the insects pollenating them and what would happen if a bumblebee fell in a fly trap) and discussed stories about fly traps named Len and Simon.

Dusty

The first full week back is often pretty tough as Ferdy finds the transition between home and school really hard, and Gil is happy but slightly unsettled by the adjustment from reception to year one, so running around and soaking up a bit of nature felt like the right thing to do.

And when Ferdy got stuck in the turnstile at the end of the day, after I had told him multiple times not to play with it, how could I really get cross when he retorted that he was like the fly in the fly trap?

More or less

 

From Antman to Alice in Wonderland via the Snail and the Whale and Aesop's the Lion and the Mouse, Ferdy and Gil have always been fascinated by scale. For a while, Ferdy's favourite creature was a tardigrade, and, after the question about who would win in a fight, they are constantly querying and comparing the sizes of animals and people. Gil still thinks that the biggest in the class is also the oldest.

Obviously, less than and more than comes up in maths a lot too, and today we looked at comparing fractions with different denominators. Ferdy struggled with this initially, but as is often the case, when we got out something for him to play with, he enjoyed working out whether 2/3 was bigger or smaller than 2/4.

Gil also did his own scaling up and down of numbers by adding and subtracting from 20 using a numberline.

After our maths, we began part two of our day about scale and headed out (befittingly with The Borrowers as our soundtrack) to the recently opened Museum of Making, and the Scale exhibition.

We spent a bit of time here, looking at models of churches and train stations and the boys were most intrigued by the photos by Slinkachu. 

But the absolute best thing in this marvellous new museum, was the Assemblage room on the floor below. This is a collection of about 1000 seemingly random objects ranging from porcelain monkeys to telephone switchboards, all grouped according to the material that they are made of and displayed in an open museum store room. Sounds a bit boring? Not when there is an electronic database which members of the public (children) can use to create their own trails. Ferdy spent ages looking for objects and printing them out on lists (so many lists..) and Gil and I had to use the letter and number coordinates on the wall to find his objects. I've never been so excited to find a Midland Rail Lever Pull Plate (located A3, Drawer 1) in my life.

Influenced by Slinkachu's photos, we later created our own; Gil put himself in the fridge, and Ferdy at the front of a line up of playmobil Vikings.

Gil then wrote a rather funny story about getting bigger and smaller:

Once upon a time there was a boy who was a ordinary boy but you will notice that I will
not always be a ordinary boy. That boy once got shot by a witch snd he became a little
boy. Just as he was opening the fridge door, he became little and just then he felt a tingly
feeling and he began to get big and soon he was back to normal size but the only problem
was that the fridge was broken.

And Ferdy used his photo to write a Beowulf inspired story about Ferdy the brave hero who met Vikings and defeated a Worrot and his avenging mother, perhaps encompassing nicely a few of the lessons we have learnt both at home and school this term.

This was our last flexi day this term, we'll return in September unless we manage a summer flexi extravaganza (as we did a few years ago) in a more adventurous summer than last year.

A day in the life...

Ferdy and I decided we'd had enough of 2021 this week, so we transported ourselves to 960 AD to experience a day in the life of a Jorvik Viking.

To be precise, we transported ourselves to Coppergate, a street in the Viking-age city of Jorvik where we met a number of its residents.

We travelled along the river, past the fishermen with a broken net and an evil slave trader, and into people's houses, meeting blacksmiths, leatherworkers and market sellers. We encountered a weaver dying her wool, a trader selling silk from the East, shells from the Red Sea and soapstone from Norway and even passed a priest giving a dying man his last rights. Ferdy enjoyed the Storyteller recounting the Völuspà; the story of the creation of the world and its end at Ragnorok. I'm sure it helps that many of the Norse gods and places feature in the Marvel films.

In the museum itself, we watched coin striking and purchased our own version made from one of the Anglo Saxon coin dies found at Coppergate, which featured the King Aethelstan.

In boring 2021, we had been learning about fractions over breakfast and I was pleased to hear, when informed that this coin would buy about 16 chickens, and people cut it into halves and quarters if they needed less, Ferdy pipe up that a half would buy 8 chickens and a quarter, 4 chickens. It is rather nice to see that something goes in to that rather dreamy head of his...

Meanwhile, in a cardboard tube factory in modern day Birmingham there was serious work to be done; it was time for Gil to experience a day in the life of a factory worker.

Gil learnt about measuring the length and diameter of a cardboard tube, he watched each different machine and saw how it works (his favourite was the tube winder whose superpower is to make cardboard tubes longer and longer, otherwise known by Gil as the Groot machine - always a Marvel reference) and he met all the factory workers. He excelled himself in 'stapilising' lots of paper together and he even answered the phone and took some orders, totally unfazed by an order of 100 tubes which he replied would cost £100. Obviously.

Finally he managed to write and type up a story about the last dragon. Perhaps a factory in Birmingham is not so far removed from Viking-age York after all.

Under the Sea

We can't remember when Gil last went on a train, so it was thrilling to get the train to Birmingham today on our visit to the Sea Life Centre.

Gil learnt to use a ruler and measure centimetres this morning so on our way, we discussed how long things are, considering that the longest thing he'd measured was 10cm. He guessed that his foot must be about 15cm (pretty accurate) and that a train must be a trillion billion centimetres long.

We chatted to the Gentoo Penguins on our arrival at the aquarium, crawled through tunnels of tropical fish and Gil was happy to meet the sharks, despite being a little unimpressed by their size (was he expecting Jaws?)

The undulating rays were stunning, we could have watched them for ages and we also spent a lot of time spotting seahorses with Gil telling me all the facts he knew about each sea creature we saw. He knows that octopuses can get through tiny holes by morphing into different shapes and that they have three hearts. He also knows that Daddy seahorses have their babies growing in their tummies and that piranhas have scary sharp teeth. We encountered some turtles that looked like dinosaurs and Mo, the sea turtle who is 40 years old and was originally found in a lady's handbag at Heathrow airport!

After watching the sea otters (they were huge!) being fed we felt rather hungry ourselves so went off in search of lunch.

On our way back to the station, Gil proposed that getting wet in the fountains in the newly refurbished Centenary Square would be very much on topic. So he did.

Later on when Gil wrote about his day I was intrigued to see the order in which he recorded the events of the day..

I went on a train to Birmingham and went in a water fountain and I 
had three biscuits. I also went to the Sea Life Centre.

Into the Rainforest (part two)

After doing our work, we went to Wales this Friday and the boys ran through the forest in the rain and we visited Ferdy's slice of heaven on earth: Hay on Wye, home to over 25 bookshops.

We also managed to do our postponed (due to illness) rainforest visit over half term.

This was a special place. I doubt we'll ever visit the actual rainforest because a) at the rate it's being destroyed, there will be nothing left by the time we are let out again and b) I'm not sure how I feel about visiting places which are better off without humans. So at the moment, this is the best we're going to get.

Some of the birds and lizards were roaming around the space: we spotted lots of ducks, an asian water dragon and even the two-toed sloth, Cinnamon, who was languishing above us in the canopy. Other animals were in cages and tanks. None of us had ever seen an armadillo, and Ferdy's favourite amphibious fish, mudskippers were also exciting to spot. Ferdy and Gil are the perfect combination of wildlife companions: Gil has exceedingly sharp eyes and can find things neither of us have even noticed, and Ferdy has infinite knowledge about the most unusual creatures. Apparently Mum is also pretty useful as the bag carrier...

We learnt about how mudskippers can survive simultaneously on land and sea and about the poor green iguana who is actually red because he was rescued from the pet trade who often selectively breed animals and create different colour morphs. And Gil overcame his fear of snakes by meeting an Emerald tree boa and a Carpet python. Snakes are now his second favourite animal (after pandas).

We also learnt how we wouldn't really be able to cope in the rainforest for more than an hour as it was very hot and sticky and grumpy-making especially when we couldn't find the caiman (who cleverly manage to hide from the nosy public), so we were quite happy to return to the car and listen to Katherine Rundell's thrilling story about children who had to survive for a lot more than 60 minutes in the Amazon rainforest.

Rainforests (part one): How to survive

 Next Friday we are taking a trip to the Living Rainforest, so today was our training day.

After completing some column subtraction and work with doubles (you need maths skills everywhere, even in the rainforest, much to Ferdy's dismay) we packed our bags with vital equipment.

In case anyone was wondering, a net bomb is a bomb that can be thrown at a bad snake and it will trap it in a net:

Then, with Mowgli (the quintessential jungle survivor)'s wise words as our soundtrack, we set off for our rainforest training ground.

Essential preparatory activities included: spotting caimans and piranhas and therefore not swimming in the water; tunnelling; climbing; crossing some very wobbly rope bridges and navigation through a maze.

We also realised that it would be important to try our feet out on different surfaces, as we may end up in the rainforest without any shoes (no one included shoes or clothes in their survival kits), so the barefoot walk was a very good test for this. Ferdy and Gil concluded at this stage that Mum was not ready for the rainforest and would need to do some more barefoot walking practice before next Friday.

Later on, Ferdy wrote his ten steps for survival in the rainforest.

1. Keep away from piranhas and caimans.

2. Have someone else with you.

3. Have food and water with you.

4. Have some courage.

5. Make a hut out of sticks.

6. Make friends with the animals.

7. Keep a compass with you.

8. Identify the animals.

9. Don't be poisoned.

10. Stay fit because a predator might chase you so you need to be fit.

A disastrously delightful day

 Sometimes flexi- days don't work out quite as planned.

I had thought that in visiting West Midlands Safari Park, we could cleverly cover both subjects Ferdy and Gil are doing at school (rainforests and dinosaurs).

In my ever so meticulous planning, I had not realised that a) it was much farther away than I'd thought and there were a lot of roadworks on the way (thank goodness for Rudyard's Kipling's Just So Stories and Aesop's Fables) so we spent a lot of time in the car, b) the reptile house and the aquarium, where we were hoping to see rainforest reptiles and Piranhas were closed, and c) half of the West Midlands had planned to do the same thing as us..

But once we'd got over our long journey, it was pretty exciting to see zebras, elands and buffalo who came right up to our car.

Ferdy was on the look out for animals in who live in or near the rainforest so was pleased to spot the majestic Sumatran Tiger and the asian elephants.

Even better though, was our journey through the Ice Age where we met the Paraceratherium (the largest land mammal ever), a giant sloth, a Smiledon, dire wolves, woolly mammoths and many other now extinct creatures, some of whom Ferdy pointed out, may have lived in a kind of rainforest habitat. 

And the dinosaurs didn't disappoint.

Appropriately the sun also came out for our encounter with these terrible lizards so we really felt like we had gone back to the Triassic period. Gil thoroughly enjoyed informing us whether they were carnivores or herbivores and we were all a little scared by the thumping sound of the Tyrannosaurus Rex approaching through the forest.

When we arrived home after three hours in traffic jams we agreed it had been worth it, although Ferdy did suggest that reading books all day at home about rainforests and dinosaurs might have been just as good. 

In the footprints of dinosaurs

It was just Gil at home this Friday; he's learning about dinosaurs at school, so we decided to have a dinosaur day.

This began with a dinosaur stomp around the prehistoric woods.

We spotted a Brachiosaurus, a type of pterosaur, a Plesiosaur in the water whose baby had got stuck in a pipe, and although luckily we didn't actually see the Tyrannosaurus Rex, we saw trampled down tree roots where it may have been running.

When we got home, we did our research about the dinosaurs and reptiles that we had seen by reading, Harry and the Dinosaurs at the Museum, How do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?, The Super Swooper Dinosaur, Lift the Flap Dinosaurs and Gil even read me Ten Little Dinosaurs.

One of our paleontologist pals told us about a 4 year old who had discovered a dinosaur footprint a couple of weeks ago so we thought we'd better do our bit for science by seeing if we could find out which dinosaur the foot belonged to. After intensive investigation involving all his dinosaur reference books and online, Gil concluded that it must be the footprint of a Comsognathus. We'll be informing the scientists of our findings.

Gil also made his own dinosaur footprints in the garden (as a surprise for Ferdy and Billy), labelled his favourite reptile, put all his toy dinosaurs in their rightful habitats and of course, finished the day by drawing Indominus Rex with his beloved Art For Kids Hub.

When all you want to do is read a good book

 Ferdy doesn't really understand World Book Day. He doesn't get why people dress up, or write stories or do craft activities about book characters. Surely World Book Day means only one thing and that is to read books all day.

So this Friday, we celebrated World Book Day the Ferdy way, which basically meant all of us reading books aloud, reading books in our head and listening to audiobooks.

He and Gil agreed to compile a list of all the books that we'd read but we had to stop when I realised Ferdy was reading books in secret so that he didn't have to write them on the list.

Unfortunately though, Gil announced this week (when he told me he was bored and I suggested reading a book) that he is 'not the sort of child that likes books'.. But when we made a cake for Billy's birthday, he did confess that books can have their uses.

P.S. To all our devoted followers, we won't be doing a blog until after the Easter holidays as the boys will be in school on Fridays up until Easter.

A grimacing face like a smiling lion

Schooling at home has been hard this week: perhaps due to having a week off last week, perhaps because the weather has been better and the last thing the boys want to do is sit in front of a computer and perhaps because this way of living is taking its toll on all of us. Gil summarised how we're getting on pretty well when he pointed out that we each have little problems: his is his eczema, Ferdy's is that he can't get to sleep, Daddy's is his back and Mummy's is 'shoutin'...

So to prevent too much shouting from Mum, Ferdy took over some of the teaching this Friday.

Gil's been learning about labelling and Ferdy's learning about measurement in maths which has been pretty tricky; it's especially confusing when he's had to convert a combination of cm and mm into mm. For today's maths, both boys chose some of their favourite toys, photographed them, cut them out and then Gil labelled his with their names, both labelled them with measurements and Ferdy converted all the measurements into mm  I was surprised at how much Ferdy had taken in when he explained to Gil about how to measure with a ruler starting at 0, and about how cm become mm by adding a 0... He didn't even get frustrated when Gil got it wrong. He is a far better teacher than I am. 

Ferdy's also been learning about literary devices and using description this week, again, this has seemed like a lot for him to take in, so we decided to focus on looking at similes and metaphors, especially as so many of Ferdy's favourite authors use them all the time. He has found it quite tricky to understand how one thing can be used to describe another ('but Mummy, a pile of broken cars is like a pile of broken cars') but when we started looking at how the BFG carried Sophie like 'a sack of potatoes' (Roald Dahl) and how when Polly in Mr Gum laughs 'the sunlight went splashing off her pretty teeth like diamonds in search of adventure' (Andy Stanton), it seemed to help. Gil also quite enjoyed this although I refused to put down Mummy smells like a poo on our list of similes. 

I have run out of ways to actively link our learning to our outings so I didn't even try today. We went for a scooter ride, had a picnic, watched some geese and played in the woods.

Later on, Ferdy wrote about one of his favourite characters, Mr Gum who has a 'grimacing face like a smiling lion', clothes as 'smelly as a bin' and who wears a 'tiny hat like a mini ringmaster who turned back to normal size but his hat didn't' (Ferdy Davies). And when they were having their bi-weekly storytime with Granny, Gil noticed 'the thing that we learnt today!', when the dragon in the story was described 'as meek as a lamb' (Rosemary Manning).

Fresh air & screen free Friday

It was fresh air and screen free Friday this week.

 This meant it was like a weekend day for us really, apart from no TV. Plus Billy was off work which was very exciting for the boys and also for me because this meant a trip to the woods without me so I could relax and not have to help with English and Maths.

Both boys enjoyed their day and even managed a bit of writing (screen free doesn't mean no work at all Mum said, meanly) although Ferdy lamented that it was a little bit complicating because now he couldn't remember which day was Saturday. Life can be hard for an eight year old...

To the time of the Andrewsarchus..

 This week we did something illegal, so please stop reading now if this makes you feel uncomfortable.

We are still supposed to be only travelling for work and staying local for exercise. All travel outside our region is not really allowed.

But this Friday, we travelled back in time.

We travelled back approximately 15000 years, which we guessed must be the Stone Age.

This was confirmed by Wolverine and Deer (apparently, according to Wolverine, Stone Age people were named after things in nature) whom I met, having lost Ferdy and Gil. I was then bombarded with a plethora of Stone Age facts like how they only spoke in grunt language, and how they were called Hunter Gatherers because they hunted animals and then gathered together to eat the food... I even met Deer's pet Woolly Mammoth called Berry (because he's a herbivore and only eats berries) and was taken to their Winter Camp (their Summer Camp had been invaded by baddies who had stolen all their animal skin clothes).

We spotted Woolly Mammoths in the distance (top right), a nest which we thought must belong to an eagle or perhaps an owl, and even some Andrewsarchus poo, which I was a little surprised about as I thought that they had lived in Asia, but Wolverine informed me that some had come over before the UK had split from Europe (the first time).

Things slightly deteriorated when we met Andy from Andy's Prehistoric Adventures so I was quite pleased to return to our time machine to listen to Stig of the Dump and return to the time of 2021. Until I remembered what 2021 entailed, and felt that perhaps living in a camp with my extended family wearing deerskin and roaming far and wide might not be such a bad option.