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).
