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.