Outlaw

Today was about taking from the rich, and giving to those in need. And no, I'm not talking about Labour's manifesto launch this week.

Running into Sherwood Forest away from Guy of Gisbourne

I'm talking about the Legend of Robin Hood.

We began by learning a little about the difference between myths and legends; primarily that myths have magic and monsters in them, and that legends are, at least partly, based upon reality. Having really enjoyed learning about Guy Fawkes at school, and also about Charles II's escape from the Roundheads, we also looked a bit at the historical figures who feature at the time of Robin Hood like Richard the Lionheart and his evil brother John.

On our way to Sherwood Forest, we listened to Outlaw, Michael Morpurgo's gripping re-telling of the legend of Robin Hood. Approaching Edwinstowe we reached a compelling bit in the tale where a pursued Robin Hood and his blind father, who he has rescued from the Sheriff of Nottingham, are fleeing over open fields and into the forest on horseback. I actually had to slow the car down and reassure myself and Ferdy and Gil that the Sheriff's men weren't really after us.

tl clockwise: Shooting arrows like Robin Hood; Major Oak; selecting arrows; balancing;
reading about Major Oak; hiding for an ambush

The woodland is much smaller than it would have been in the 12th century, but it still has many of the ancient oak trees, most famously the legendary 1,000 year old Major Oak. We learnt that these gorgeously gnarled hollow oak trees were often used as hiding places for Robin Hood and his mens' rations and sometimes themselves.

Of course we then had to play at being outlaws, ambushing the rich and giving money and food to the poor. We also had to select our arrows, practice hiding, collect firewood, forage for food and get married (Gil was Robin, Ferdy was Maid Marian).

Ready for an ambush

I did have to end the game which involved both boys jumping in front of unsuspecting dog walkers and (after a lengthy debate with each other about whether they were rich or poor - you can tell by their clothes apparently), demanding half their money.

Back at home I had written Ferdy some comprehension questions about the Legend of Robin Hood. What could be more succinct than his answer to the question about messages or morals we can take from the legend:

Sage words indeed. I know who I'm going to be voting for on December 12th.

Powerful nature

On grey days where the rain is monotonous, there is really only one thing for it: go to Derby Museum.

They currently have an exhibition on about Japanese woodcuts, so, following some column addition, we decided to learn a little bit about Japan.

I've realised that the best way to discover a new country with Ferdy (other than go to it) is to approach it via its animals and its folktales. So we learnt about Japanese macaques and flying squirrels, and read the story of the Monkey and the Crab and the Tale of the Nine Tailed Fox.

The museum is only about 1/8 of our new audiobook, Michel Morpurgo's Elephant in the Garden, away, and, as we seemed to be having an animal-ish day, we begun with some crafts (randomly making toilets for National Toilet Day) and studying more animals in the nature gallery.

Because the folktales part of the woodcuts exhibition was empty, both boys felt the need to run round and round shouting and playing chase, ignoring all pictures. Gradually though, as I (who had been ignoring my children) read out the prints' captions, they began to be interested. We read about enormous spiders, dancing goblins and ghostly warriors. We saw the spirits of giant frogs and one hundred night demons, and learnt the story the old woman of lone house who lured in travellers and murdered them in their sleep.

Looking at the giant frogs

After our immersion in the horrors of Japanese folk tales, it was off to the World Gallery for more stories and read a lovely book about a fragmented community who come together again through making stone soup.

Feeling hungry, we then went to the cafe for crisps and coffee and some unsuccessful origami. Sadly, I could not construct the desired Japanese macaque, in fact, I couldn't even make a simple origami bird. Ferdy didn't really mind though, I think he quite enjoys it when I'm a bit hopeless at something.

Our animal-ish day ended with writing some fun facts about animals, hot dogs (oh the irony) and a nature programme.

The house that saved a king

Ferdy came back from school this week really excited about the story of Guy Fawkes, and it struck me that, as a boy whose life is so enriched by stories, he may really enjoy learning about history.

It also linked quite nicely to one of the places on my list that we haven't been to yet, Moseley Old Hall, the house where King Charles II hid for a few days when fleeing the Parliamentarians, only some fifty years and two kings after Guy Fawkes's execution (one of the words Ferdy and Gil learnt today along with tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered..).

First we explored the grounds.

tl-br clockwise: mud kitchen; mapreading; treehouse; swinging; climbing; reading signs; hiding; more climbing; balancing

We followed the map to find and climb, what might be, the best treehouse. Ever.

We ran though the woods, balanced on logs, played Narnia, swung in the trees, insisted on walking around pulling a tree, cooked in the mud kitchen. And we hadn't even had our lunch yet.

Over lunch, I told them the story of Charles II (which I had looked up as, I am ashamed to say, I have rather a potted history of the kings and queens of England) and his escape, disguised as a huntsman over the fields to the Hall, where he was hidden in a priest hole whilst the catholic owners, Thomas and Alice Whitgreave fended off Oliver Cromwell's troops.

Both Ferdy and Gil were fascinated and off we went to find the priest hole, the bed Charles II rested in and the kitchen in which he ate.

tl-br clockwise: looking out to the knot garden; Gil/King Charles in the chapel;
eating at the table; holding a real gun and sword; wearing a (very heavy) Cavalier's helmet;
looking into the priest hole.

What I hadn't quite realised (but should have guessed, knowing my children as I do) was that we were going there to act out the story, scene by scene. Gil was Charles II, I was Alice Whitgreave and Ferdy was Oliver Cromwell's troops, and Thomas Whitgreave. Gil even insisted I wash Charles' bleeding feet. Luckily, there weren't many people at the house, and luckily it was a quiet game as we had to keep a tired and hungry Charles II hidden.

The game momentarily stopped for us to attend part of a guided tour led by the volunteers of the house, who were dressed in the attire of the time. Gil bravely asked one of the guides whether they still had King Charles' disguise and was very excited to hear that the volunteer was wearing a huntsman outfit similar to that which King Charles would have worn when on the run.

Ferdy thoroughly enjoyed it when Pancake (the guide, and yes, it was his name) requested that Ferdy be his assistant for some magic tricks. Pancake also thrillingly got out a REAL gun and two REAL swords for Ferdy and Gil to hold.

It was such a delightful day, I didn't even mind that our game carried on all the way home (our car was the horse and carriage taking Charles II to the boat and crossing to France).

For us, Moseley Old Hall is the house that brought a king to life.

Gil's depiction of Charles II (left) and Thomas Whitgreave.
Notice that Charles II is big because we learnt he was very
tall for his era.

The Day of the Dead

We don't shirk away from the topic of death in our house. In fact, it seems to enter most games being played and most discussions we have: 'When you die Mummy, I will be sad for a whole day'. All of us have varying theories on what happens after we die; that we come back as a selection of animals sometimes slugs (Gil) and that we become stars in the sky (Ferdy).

This Friday we decided to have a death day, partly due to the imminence of Halloween but also because we got sent a video by our friends who live in Mexico, of their shrine to all the people they had known in their lives. I really like the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead, in which they honour their dead relatives and friends by creating shrines with photographs and their favourite food and drink.

We discussed how different countries celebrate Halloween, and then we also talked about the people/animals we know who have died. As of yet, Ferdy's only actual experience of death is when my Mum's dog Rory died but I also told them about my lovely Grandmother, Amma, who died about 15 years ago. We read a few books tackling the concept of death including Goodbye Mog, Michael Rosen's Sad Book about the death of his son, and Waiting for Wolf by Sandra Dieckmann which beautifully covers the stages of grief a fox goes through when his wolf friend dies.

Then we had to cheer ourselves up with Ferdy reading us some Halloween jokes, and by making Halloween gingerbread.

'What do you call a fat pumpkin?'
'A plumpkin!'

'What plant likes Halloween?'
'BamBOO!'

Two of Ferdy's favourite jokes which he wrote for his writing today.

Naturally a day about death is not a true day about death without mentioning Star Wars, so we did some brilliant Star Wars yoga.

And concluded with some Star Wars maths and singing Happy Death Day..

Running up that hill

Thorpe Cloud - the hill we climbed

Somedays, you just have to climb a hill.

On our way to the Peaks we listened to our new audiobook, 'Wolf Brother', about a hunter gatherer boy from a wolf clan who has to make a long journey to the Mountain of the World Spirit with only his wolf for company. Ascending Thorpe Cloud, Ferdy told me about all other the mountains he knows about (including the ones in Archenland near Narnia and Angry Mountain and Wild Dragon Cliff on the Isle of Berk). Then he ran off to find the Mountain of the World Spirit, and was just a dot ahead of us for the rest of the way up and back down.

Ferdy is just visible at the end of the path

We eventually caught up with him right down at the bottom where he was doing some rock climbing.

Gil had been asking me all week about a book I have on the Matisse cut-outs and is very intrigued about him creating the cut-outs whilst sitting in his wheelchair and no longer being able to paint. So we looked at his cut out pictures and Ferdy wrote about his favourite one, and then we made pictures inspired by our morning out.

Our hills became volcanoes (because they are more fun) but hey, there would have been volcanic action in the Peaks at some point so why not?





It's often pretty tricky for Ferdy to concentrate on Friday afternoons, but not this Friday. Perhaps we should all run up and down hills a little more often.

What's for dinner?

My two boys are always asking me what animals eat, and who eats who. They love all the apex predators like T-Rex and great white sharks and crocodiles and seem to be totally unfazed by videos of Komodo dragons eating buffalo and lions devouring zebras.

And we have recently been learning about and listening to a lot about friendship so I thought it would be good to counter this with looking at the food chain and animal 'enemies'. Ferdy loved the BBC bitesize video and we learnt a little about simple food chains before we set off on the train to the Sea Life Centre to look for some of the different links in a food chain.

We've been fortunate enough to see two different types of penguins in the last couple of weeks: Humbolt penguins (from Chile) and Gentoo penguins (from Antarctica). We were also on the hunt for sharks (both boys), seahorses (Gil), plesiosaurs (Ferdy), clown fish (Gil), eels (Ferdy), seals (me), rays (Ferdy) and we found them all. The only thing we couldn't find was krill or shrimp which was at the bottom of our food chain worksheet. Oh and there was a dearth of plesiosaurs.

Most exciting was seeing the two seals: Boo and Pippa being fed fish (2nd on our food chain eaten by 3rd on our food chain) and Ferdy and Gil even managed to watch from within a glass box right in the heart of the seal tank.

Boo catches a fish

We seem to be unable to visit Birmingham without a stop off at the magnificent Central library so after completing our worksheets over lunch, and a few rides on the escalators we managed to spend a happy hour reading. Good books included: Bob's Best Friend Ever; Little Red; Harry & Hopper and The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon. It struck me that many children's books are primarily about friendship or predation.

Later on Ferdy wrote about food chains and then drew his own: algae, eaten by mosquito larvae, eaten by a mosquito larvae eating fish, eaten by a heron, eaten by an alligator. 

The State of Nature

On the day that a State of Nature report has been published showing that 15 per cent of our species are under threat of extinction and 41 per cent in decline since 1970, it seemed right to spend it outdoors appreciating and learning about the wildlife that we have left, and, as we always try to do on Fridays, thinking about what we can do to protect our wildlife.

Ferdy had also suggested we learn about hibernation (because the Moomins hibernate), although his suggestion that we practise hibernation by staying in bed all day was not one that I took up.

After attending harvest festival at school, we headed straight out to our local forestry centre, with The Wind in the Willows as our soundtrack.

We looked for evidence of animals and found rabbit holes, verified by Ferdy who found the rabbit poo nearby. Scattered all around the centre are wooden sculptures of animals and when we saw (or rode) on one, we discussed what it does in the winter. Ferdy thought that badgers hibernate because in Peter Rabbit on CBeebies Tommy Brock (the badger) is always having a nap, but Billy later told us they don't, they just sleep more (like us..).

A huge amount of time was spent in the bird hide, where we spotted squirrels gathering nuts (they don't hibernate) and a plethora of birds including nuthatches and long tailed tits. There is also an extensive guide to birds in the hide and we played a brill game where one of us had to say a bird and the others race to point to it. Even Gil could play if I told him the first letter. It was a bit noisy though and we didn't see many more real birds afterwards.

Our final task at the centre was to collect conkers; rollies (very round ones for good rolling), and cheek strokers (flat edged ones for stroking on your cheek).

This large bag of conkers was then used back at home to play a game learning about greater than and less than.

For Ferdy's writing today he wrote a letter to a new penfriend I have set up for him: Luna who lives in Spain and is the daughter of one of my friends (she speaks English, although it's a good incentive to learn a bit of Spanish). He even wrote some questions with question marks...

One of our few mammals that do actually hibernate is the poor hedgehog, I say poor because their species has declined by 95 per cent since 1970. We felt really sad about this; they feature in many of the books we read, but Ferdy and Gil may never see a real one.

Reading Wide-awake Hedgehog to us