Let's ask the kids

 I thought that this was going to be a blog about how this Friday we played a great game about arrays by using a wipeboard, a number sentence and some lego. Or about how we read and listened to lots of Michael Rosen's poems to aid us in learning about poetic devices (in times of need, we always call on Michael Rosen). Or about how Ferdy seems to have taught Gil to read without anyone really noticing.

But as we were on our way out to the woods with the wonderful Ickabog as our soundtrack, I was struck by how all the books that we read feature children who make better choices than adults, children who speak the truth and aren't distracted by politics or societal rules, children who are brave, strong and honourable because they feel it is the right thing, not because they are trying to impress someone else.

As well as the valorous Daisy Dovetail in the Ickabog, who (spoiler alert) against all odds persuades the Ickabog not to kill, this week we've read about: a boy who speaks to animals and saves a giant turtle from being eaten by greedy adults, little Stella Saxby who manages to escape being poisoned by her aunt by refusing to drink the tea which her parents politely and fatally drink, and Amelia Fang who aged ten teaches her whole family a lesson about friendship and loyalty. Even Biff, Chips and Kipper have been known be more insightful than their slightly hapless parents and teachers.

And when we were in the woods today, and Ferdy and Gil wanted to go off exploring with me (breathlessly) trying to keep up, I realised that these two haven't had much choice recently. Whilst the government and parents and teachers grapple with how to negotiate home learning and teaching and working, our kids just have to get on with whatever rules we set.

Ferdy proclaimed this Friday his best day ever because he and Gil led the way, and he and Gil decided where we should go. They didn't take the set path through the woods; we had to climb over branches, leap over the stream and crawl though a tunnel. Our walk even involved smashing lots of ice on the pond. Ok, it wasn't compromising with an Ickabog but was loads more fun than following the path.

Later on, Ferdy decided not to write a poem about a magic box as had been our (my) plan, but instead about a Naked Egyptian Mummy.

I love it.

And Gil decided to start a diary instead of writing out his new sounds.

So we will do the work, but we might do some of it the Ferdy and Gil way.

Developing empathy

 When Ferdy watches a film, he doesn't sit down and watch it; he has to stand in the characters' shoes and act out all the scenes as the film is happening. This can be a little tiring for the other audience members. When Ferdy finishes a book, he plans an elaborate game pretending to be lots of the protagonists (often the bad guys). Gil, of course, joins in all of these games (he plays the heroes).

Both Ferdy and Gil play a huge amount of make believe games and I wonder whether these games may be quite good lessons in developing empathy; they seem able to immerse themselves completely in the roles they are playing and feel what they imagine that the characters are feeling. It can sometimes be a little annoying when they won't come out of character ('Mummy, Justice is far too busy savin' Baby Boy and Floppy's lives to go to school') but such connection with other people's experiences, whether good or evil, can't be a bad way to understand empathy.

Our activity this Friday was to go to the National Trust's Peter Rabbit trail and meet (be) the characters. Ferdy has loved these books for a long time and Gil likes the stories now too. Ferdy read us Peter Rabbit in the morning, which I was pleased about as I don't enjoy reading the Beatrix Potter books at all! Despite their lovely illustrations, they are really awkward to read, although I'm sure many Beatrix Potter fans, including Ferdy, would disagree.

Our trail companions were Miss Tiggiwinkle, Squirrel Nutkin, Mr Jeremy Fisher, Mr McGregor and of course, the errant Peter Rabbit (Gil's favourite because he is cheeky), but much to Ferdy's disappointment, no Samual Whiskers who is vile and naughty and is Ferdy's favourite character. We learnt lots of good facts like that turnips were thrown at unpopular Romans, and that hedgehogs only breathe once or twice a minute whilst hibernating.

Back at home, Ferdy wrote a letter from Samual Whiskers to Tom Kitten. We have enjoyed the letter writing theme this term - also a great way to practise a bit of empathy. And Gil decided to write a card for Billy whose back is hurting and his fishing friend has died and Gil thought that he would be sad.

I sometimes worry that we aren't teaching our kids enough, or that we're focussing too much on work that they aren't that keen on doing, but if a capacity to empathise and having compassion for others, is something that my kids grow up with, it will feel like we maybe got something right! Even if it does mean that we have to cobble together Avengers costumes most Saturday mornings...

Justice from The Avengers

Too much time in the family tree

I'm a bit jealous of Stick Man. Yes, I know he gets chased by a dog, used as a mast for a silly old flag and nearly burnt in the fireplace. But he goes to the beach, sails out to sea and even rides on Santa's sleigh. We, on the other hand barely go anywhere at the moment and are spending all of our time in the family tree.

We based some of our learning around Stick Man today as Gil is reading it at school, and Ferdy still loves all the Julia Donaldson books.

Ferdy rewrote some of the phrases as fronted adverbials:

And Gil looked for words he can read using his new sounds this week, like hook and soot, and copied some out.

I'm not sure this is quite how you spell Stick Man, Gil.

Desperate to leave the family tree, we headed out to the Arboretum on the trail of the man himself.

It was icy cold as it's pretty exposed at the Arboretum but we wore trousers, waterproof trousers, three layers underneath our coats, gloves and hats, and we were fine and it only started raining as we reached the end. The trail took us through woodland, along the stream, past the lake, over bridges and ended in a mini assault course. Almost as exciting as Stick Man's adventure...

At the weekend we decorated our own family tree with Beano characters...

The Great Garden Grammar Game

On the way home from school on Thursday, Ferdy cried in the car because he said he didn't want a Ugandan penfriend.. (his school are twinning with a school in Uganda). Eventually I realised that this was because he already has a penfriend in Spain, and he thought this new penfriend would have to replace his Spanish penfriend. 

So on Friday, we talked a bit about schools in Africa, and how exciting it will be for them to have penfriends in the UK, and also how not all children can afford to go to school there and how that makes some of them sad. We read a lovely book called Beatrice's Goat about how a girl in Uganda gets a goat which enables her family to earn enough money for her to go to school.

Ferdy has also learnt a bit about commas this week, and Gil has started learning his vowel digraphs and trigraphs so we invented the Great Garden Grammar Game.

This involved the Sentencer (me), the Full Stop/Capital Letters Policeman and Chief Rubber Outer (Gil), and the Comma King and Exclamation/Question/Speech Marks Detective (Ferdy).

Stones were gathered as full-stops, dried leaves were commas and the rest was done in coloured chalk. There was a bit of grumpiness to start with, mainly about being outside when it was warm inside and slippers are more comfy than shoes.. But we all got quite into this, especially when I started taking sentences from Ferdy's book, Ratburger, and when Gil had his own phrases with his new sounds.

We played this game for much longer than anticipated and I was pleasantly surprised to see Ferdy adding in speech marks and even realising that a comma sometimes goes in a place to make a pause, leading to a more fluent reading of a phrase.

Ferdy's decided he will actually write a letter to his Ugandan class, so, you never know, it might actually include a few commas.

Serendipitous Stories

In The Animals of Farthing Wood, the main protagonist, Fox, is parted from all his friends and nearly drowns when he gets trapped in some debris floating down the river. Despite drifting far away from his pals, he meets Vixen, and muses to himself that out of something bad, good has arisen, thus transforming his view on how bad the bad thing actually was.

We talked quite a bit about this today; how every cloud has a silver lining, and how serendipity can occur, especially as our day entailed acting out scenes from the Animals of Farthing Wood and trying to put ourselves in the shoes/paws of the animals..

Ferdy made a list of all the perilous things that the group of animals have had to encounter in the story so far, and we went to Calke Abbey to search for them. 

Cautiously crossing the trunk road, we found the treacherous swimming pool, the army land where the woodland creatures had to flee from the fire, the barn in which they took shelter and then had to tunnel their way out of, the thorns upon which some the of new baby animals were impaled by the Butcher Bird (yes, The Animals of Farthing Wood does not shy away from the gory details of the animal kingdom, and yes, one of our new words today was impale) and Vixen's den. Luckily, we did not have to experience the horrors of the fox hunt, chapter 22 which we read whilst we were there; if I were not already against fox hunting, I would be after reading this chapter.

We also managed some Animals of Farthing Wood column addition and subtraction, (eg Farthing Wood used to have 987 trees growing in it. The bulldozers have cut down 768 trees and taken them away. How many trees are there left growing in Farthing Wood?) and Gil was also happy because I'd made him some worksheets.

On the way to and from Calke, we started listening to the Ikabog, and when we got home we watched the wonderful Amantha Edmead's rendition of the Wolf and the Seven Kids, which we get sent weekly by the Story Museum in Oxford (where we were supposed to be going for Ferdy's birthday next week). Ferdy and Gil then wrote ten minutes of facts that they could remember from the story, although Ferdy doesn't know it's ten minutes as he hates being timed! This was a good idea from his teacher and a great way to get them both to consider the most pertinent bits of a story and learn to summarise. Ferdy has a tendency to tell the whole story almost word for word when asked to explain what it's about, stubbornly insisting on reaching the end..

It was a rainy, cold and grey day and I hadn't been expecting much but according to Gil, this was his best flexi days ever. I'm inclined to agree that it was definitely one of our better ones; thanks to that little injection of serendipity we finished the day with rosy cheeks, stories in our heads and a renewed spring in our paws. 

Lockdown letters

 We did a lot of work this Friday, and not much else.

I don't really know why this is happening but we do seem to be spending a lot of time at the kitchen table, either doing worksheets or doing our learning, and I'm not sure how happy this is making any of us.

It may partly be due to having spent six months at home with the kitchen becoming our classroom. Or maybe because Gil seems to really like writing and drawing so we are a little influenced by his enthusiasm. Or also because we aren't able to go to a lot of the exciting and enriching places we usually have access to; we can't even go to the library!

But we also need to remember why we flexischool in the first place. We started because for a long time, Ferdy was very unhappy at school. But we also started because we feel quite strongly that learning through outdoor play, enrichment and study, through experience and through real life lessons, is really vital. And, despite our love of them, we seem to have strayed away a little from learning through stories. Stories are the still the most important thing in Ferdy's life (he loves books more than he loves his parents); our most successful flexi days have revolved around a story like learning about rainforests and chocolate with Michael Morpurgo's 'Running Wild', following Fred the Frog's adventures at Biddulph Grange Gardens, experiencing Victorian England through A Christmas Carol and even addressing climate change though Dr Seuss's The Lorax. 

This Friday, both boys elected to write letters; Ferdy to his Granny in Dorset, and Gil to his cousin Ade in Essex.

They also wrote the envelopes, stamped and posted them, which was kind of fun, Gil also wants us to learn about stamps so there might well be a part 2 to letter writing. Ferdy is not really enjoying writing at the moment though, so, whilst Gil was completing worksheet #124, Ferdy did some column addition.

    

In lockdown (when I had time), we did quite a few of these. Ferdy really likes combining maths with other things and rewarding his result with a letter that answers his question is a really good incentive to get his sums right. He sometimes just wants to get things done quickly (so he can read his Beano) and doesn't really mind if they are right or wrong, but because he gets a letter for his correct sum, he is motivated to go back over his results to check when he can't find the corresponding number. I'd do lots more of these if they didn't take me over an hour to do! 

Gil's learning about the lovely Owl Babies story at school this week so, after finding out a bit about Tawny Owls, we did eventually manage to get out to search for owls.

We found a bird to play in, a Barn Owl with a mouse, and a Tawny Owl sound to listen to. But perhaps the real highlight of the day was watching up close a family of squirrels stashing nuts and racing nimbly up and down trees. 

We may not have museums or theatres or libraries but we still have stories and nature, so my note to self is let's embrace what we do have a bit more.

Gil's letter to Ade

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..