A tremendous thing

Ferdy and Gil are really good friends. I'm not sure how long it will stay like this but currently, although they do argue, they seem simply to like each other and enjoy one another's company. They don't compete much, perhaps because Ferdy isn't very competitive (he is actually happy when Gil wins a race), perhaps because they have different skills. It also helps that they both love Star Wars.

Both boys really like Fridays because they have an extra day together; Gil has started to join in more with the work that we do and I'm sure his enthusiasm for it is rubbing off on Ferdy.

Ferdy doing some maths and Gil writing Meerkat and Lemur

Ferdy's learning about animals and their habitats at school at the moment so after some maths (Ferdy) and practising writing meerkat and lemur (Gil), we studied some other animals we were going to be meeting today at Peak Wildlife Park.

Gil suggested that we listen to the rest of Charlotte's Web on the way as it's also about animals, I hesitantly agreed. Hesitantly, because I needed clear vision for the drive and it's nearly at the bit which makes me need to brush something out of my eye... (spoiler alert: when Charlotte is left to die).

tl clockwise: No warty pigs; watching the Humbolt penguins; stroking his new wallaby friend;
reading about wild animals; being followed by pygmy goats; reading about the maneless zebra

The advantage of torrential rain is that we get places to ourselves, we are able to chat to the keepers and we really get to know and interact with the animals. The disadvantage is that quite a few animals don't want to be outside. We didn't see the warty pigs or the mainless zebras, and the lemurs only reluctantly sidled out of their hut for a bit of food (carrots). But the wallabies seemed quite content in the rain and even let Ferdy stroke them; we learnt that they like eating grass, leaves and shoelaces. And the pygmy goats in the African Village were impervious to the muddy puddles and happy to be herded by and follow around a cheeky little six year old.

We even got our own private talk from one of the keepers about the meerkats and what they eat (grubs, crickets, mice and carrots), where they live and why they are sandy coloured. Ferdy then gave the zookeeper a talk about when Andy of Andy's Safari Adventures met meerkats and what a meerkat alarm call sounds like, and Gil gave a little talk about his own camouflage trousers and how he wears them in the forest but not in the grass because they don't work there. I was a little tired at this point so opted not to give a talk.

All the information we'd gathered about where our new animal friends originate from was easily recorded on worksheets, diligently prepared by Mum, in the cafe later. And I couldn't argue with Ferdy when he wrote 'child' in the space for an animal found in the UK.

As well as being about animals, today was about making animal friends, and human friends, and being friends, and crying about book friends, and learning about friendship which, as Charlotte says, is a tremendous thing.

Never hurry and never worry

There are spiders everywhere at the moment; their webs are adorning our windows and decorating our drainpipes. They are building intricate web bridges around our garden gate, which means we don't dare open it.

Our new friend the garden cross spider

We love spiders, so when we started our new home ed forest school this week we were pleased to hear that the focus was going to be on these eight legged creatures. Before we left we thought about and retold stories we knew about spiders which included one of Ferdy's favourites about Arachne and Gil's Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider. In addition to this we learnt about Anansi the Spider, a hero of West African folklore who is a renowned storyteller and trickster and often outwits those more powerful than him with cunning and guile.

It was a bit of a drive so we decided to start listening to one of my favourite books about another ingenious spider, Charlotte's Web, on the way.

The forest school is set in an old orchard within an organic farm and there were activities galore. After exploring the woods, we learnt about all the different types of spiders we can find and went on a picture hunt, ticking them all off.

Other tasks included: climbing trees, searching for spiders' webs, making mud cakes, creating a spider from pine cones, relaxing in hammocks, swinging in hammocks, making friends, gathering firewood, making popcorn on the campfire and building complicated inventions from ropes and then breaking them.

Our favourite spider of the day, however, was probably Charlotte of Charlotte's Web. One of the many knowledgable things she says to Wilbur the pig, is that he should never hurry and never worry. We have been doing rather a lot of hurrying and worrying recently, so it seemed right to take a little of the wise arachnid's advice on this beautiful, autumnal day.

We've Got Dragons

We've got dragons in our house at the moment.

Ferdy has been complaining of tummy ache, and he's been a bit unhappy about friendships within school. He's also had a headache and sore throat, and been ill over the weekend so perhaps it's all been a bit too much. Apparently some of these things can be called dragons; something we learnt by going to You've got Dragons on Sunday which is a play about a little girl who has to learn to live with her dragons (a swirly tummy, anxiety, feeling prickly) by not ignoring or running away from them.

So on Friday we embraced our dragons.

We put together a pile of books about dragons and read them all.

We sang along to Puff the Magic Dragon more times than I care to mention.

We made Lego dragons.

Ferdy did some written comprehension questions about How to Break A Dragon's Heart.

We learnt about Komodo dragons, and watched a video about a Komodo dragon fighting a snake (Gil: 'why is a baddie fighting a baddie?').

In fact, the only thing that didn't involve a dragon was some numberwork games looking at tens and ones.

The Duplo blocks are our tens, and the Lego squares, our ones

Perhaps by staying at home, and not putting too much pressure on ourselves, and reading lots of books together, and making some time for chats, and having lots of cuddles, we may have also embraced our metaphorical dragons.

©Taking Flight Theatre Company

Famous (kind of)

Our flexischooling journey is in the news..

It's in the Oct/Nov issue of The Green Parent magazine available in WH Smith (but only the very big ones and slightly hidden in the baby section).

Ferdy's response to this? Oh no Mummy I hope there won't be lots of reporters on our doorstep asking for an interview...

I don't think we need to worry about that quite yet.

Jumping Day

If Ferdy had his way, he would spend every minute of every day listening to audiobooks and reading books (I didn't know it was possible to do them simultaneously but reading The Beano whilst listening to C.S Lewis's The Horse and His Boy actually is a doddle) in his playroom.

So, when Ferdy requested that we have a jumping day for his first flexischooling day this term, I leapt (yes, I know..) at the chance of him doing some physical exercise, and suggested going trampolining.

tl-br: watching the safety video; only Ferdy finds a way to have a nap in a
trampoline park; doing a BFG leap; coming down the slide.

There's no real explanation needed for trampolining other than it's something that we can all do together and we had a a lot of fun pretending to be the BFG and having Ninja fights.

As it was a jumping day, we managed to get into a Jumping Clay session in the afternoon. And because we are all still obsessed with the How to Train Your Dragon books (yes, me too - when it's my turn to choose what we listen to in the car I no longer chose Radio 4 but How to Fight a Dragon's Fury. It is sooooo exciting. And (spoiler alert), both Ferdy and I actually cried when one of the characters died in Book 11), Ferdy made a model of sweet little Toothless.

We did a lot of reading over the summer so it's no problem getting Ferdy to read now, but doing writing and numberwork (we have an agreement that we read a book or a chapter of a book, write something and do some numberwork every Friday) had to be approached more gently. Ferdy decided to write about Billy William the Third in Mr Gum (his audiobook that day), and to count in 10s up to 100 and write them down.

Sometimes writing under no pressure and amongst a lot of mess
seems to be the best way.

Our flexischooling year began with a bounce on our bottoms, creativity with our fingertips and a character study of a dirty butcher (Andy Stanton's words, not mine)... Not a bad start!

A Summer Holiday Special: Once upon a time in Denmark

Ferdy's year has been dominated by a quite few topics but those that stand out are Star Wars, Lego, stories (particularly about Vikings), fairy tales and Greek and Norse Mythology. Flexischooling doesn't necessarily stop over the holidays, so what better place to take the boys for lego immersive, viking influenced, enchantment seeped extravaganza, than Denmark.

We went to Finland together last year - Billy can't take any time off until the end of the summer so it's an adventure just for us three - on a Moomins pilgramage, and it had been quite a lot of fun so the plan was to do a similar thing ie using public transport, staying in a few places and trying to be as intrepid as is possible with a four and six year old (hence Scandinavia not Sudan).

Our first stop was LegoLand, in Billund (which calls itself Capital of Children).

Fundamentally, LegoLand is a theme park. Although quite enjoyable, a couple of hours was enough for someone who doesn't like heights (me), someone who is only just 100cm tall (Gil) so can't go on a lot of rides, and someone who doesn't love crowds or fast rides.

I think we may have enjoyed the dot to dot in the hotel room and chocolate spread breakfast and delicious supper with beer and chips more.

The next day we set off for Odense (named after the Danish God Odin, one of the most powerful Gods in Norse mythology, and has been one of the coveted Gods in our house this year, along with Yoda and Zeus).


This involved a bus to Vejle and then a train to Odense.

Our Hans Christian Andersen (HCA) pilgrimage began with meeting the Great Dane himself.

Ferdy loved spotting the sculptures all around the city of characters from all his stories, and as well as visiting the museum, we also found his birthplace and an utterly serendipitous place called the Tinderbox. The Tinderbox, housed within the Møndergarden, is a rabbit warren of storytelling and playing and immersion in fairy tales and feasts and magic.

Top: The Bat King selects his food. Bottom l-r: a puppet show performed by Ferdy; playing a treasure hunt game;
setting the table for the feast; the Minotaur in his den; contemplating the next story.

We could have moved in there.

The next day, in search of more adventures, we went to the Funen Village, a 19th century farming village which would have existed in the time of Hans Christian Andersen. Our journey consisted of a walk down to the river, a boat along the Odense River, spotting mermaids (if mermaids live anywhere inland, it must be in the place where HCA wrote the story) and red pandas (past a zoo) along the way and then a walk through the woods. And a not insignificant amount of moaning and 'carry me's.

When we finally got there, we were just in time for a show about a man who kept trying to perform The Little Match Girl but was constantly being disturbed by other characters in the HCA tales. I think. It was all in Danish; we didn't understand a word and I don't think I have ever seen Gil laugh so much.

I could write a whole blog about each of the places that we went to in Denmark (I won't because I want to get on with my summer), but needless to say, we had a brill time discovering the village, riding on the horse and trap, weaving in and out of the gardens, reading fairy tales and doing jigsaws in the schoolroom ('please don't make me do any writing Mummy'), eating lunch in the candlelit cafe, finding a hidden tree playground in the woods.

It was back to Billund the next day, and this time to take in Lego House.

Sorry, I mean the brilliantly innovative, epicly awesome (can one even say that?), stimulatingly vibrant, architectural and interior design masterpiece that is LegoHouse.

What. A. Place.

This place is as much for parents as for kids (is it even for kids...?), which is rare in our experience. It is divided into different zones with abundant lego related activities, lego bricks galore and nothing you can't touch. We were even allowed to eat ice creams whilst making Lego ships.

tl clockwise: dinosaur sculptures made of guess what; the Lego tree reaching from the bottom to the top of the house;
making minifigures; looking at all the Star Wars minifures; making a ship; running in the rain; our pufferfish;
reading about a Lego Zeus; reading a lot more books (if possible every book there please Mummy).

I was far too busy to take many photos, but we made lego insects disco dance and race, we created a lego pufferfish which featured in a seascape film, we invented mini figures to go on the front of magazines and we even found an exhibition of every Star Wars mini figure that has even been made (over 1500 in total although I had to draw the line at us standing there naming each one and the film in which they feature). In true Ferdy fashion he spent a lot of time in the lego book corner and managed to bring all his interests together by sniffing out Lego Greek Mythology books and Lego Fairy Tale books - please imagine how unglamourous Cinderella's slipper was.

I could go on as I haven't even mentioned our evening meals (they are very important especially when they involve Danish beer for Mum) and the lovely people we met, and the words we learnt, and the books we read, and the slow motion fights in windmills and then fast motion fights in windmills (Ferdy & Gil) and the yoga in hotel lobby doorways (Ferdy) and the bedtime map game, and the laughing and crying (me..), but I won't because this post is too long already and it's time to end the story.

After the rain

It may have been the last day of term this Friday, and it may have rained rather a lot, but that didn't stop us having a day packed with activities.

Granny was staying and, after attending Ferdy's school assembly, we headed out to Ilam.

This is how you cope with rain

There was a lot of moaning and complaining on the journey and although it was partially drowned out by our new book, How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel, it started up again when we arrived in a torrential downpour.

Rain doesn't deter us (me) though so we covered ourselves with rain clothes, ignored the moaning and off we went.

We climbed rocks:

 

We balanced on walls:








We played poohsticks:

We even got lost in the rainforest:

And when your hands are so cold so you can't feel them, there is a special Granny hand hold which means 'none of your hand skin goes near the cold or wet'.

Everything looked so green and beautiful, and, to quote Eeyore (because we played poohsticks), 'the nicest thing about the rain is that it stops. Eventually', which it did. 

And after the rain comes jumping in puddles, and brownies for lunch, and reading books to Gil in the cafe, and supper in the pub, and ice cream, and late nights and late mornings.

And the long, long summer holidays. Whoop whoop!