The Rotten Romans

Ferdy loves the Ancient Romans. He knows lots of facts like how they wiped their bums with a sponge whilst eating dormice and flamingo hearts, that Julius Caesar was killed by his best friend Brutus with no pants on, and, most importantly how they used their own pee to wash their clothes...

So when we heard that his new topic at school was the Romans, we were all looking forward to lots of enthusiasm and excitement from Ferdy.

However, according to Ferdy, he knows about the Romans thanks so he doesn't need to learn about them..

So today was about rekindling a bit of enthusiasm.

Ferdy's music teacher started on Thursday night, beautifully combining his new sound science topic with his Romans topic, by playing him music from a lyre, a cithera and a tuba - some of the most popular instruments in Roman times.

After we had done our science on sound and maths on division (and a little bit on Roman numerals), we headed out to find a local Roman site.

Weary travellers, Ferdius Maximus and Harrietus (I ruled out the name Mummius Shoutious as suggested by Ferdy) journey to the small town Letocetum in search of their uncle Petronius, a rich nobleman who owns a large Mansio.

When they finally arrive, they are happy to find some baths which are free and where they can recuperate after their long journey. Ferdius, however is quick to point out to Harrietus that she is not allowed in as it is the afternoon and women are only allowed in in the mornings. Ferdius uses the toilet in the changing rooms and then enters the hot bath where he can sweat a lot and get the dirt removed from his skin. Harrietus has to content herself with a stroll around the garden and a few star jumps in the exercise area.

Later, after watching a few gladiator fights and chariot races, they find their uncle Petronious, who welcomes them with a sumptuous feast of peacocks eggs, wild boar and ostrich, followed by stuffed dates and fruit. Harrietus thoroughly enjoyed the many toasts they made to fellow diners and Ferdius was delighted to not use any cutlery. After a tiring day, they didn't even need to move from their beds at the table to go to sleep.

nox noctis!

Message in a bottle

Museums are brilliant for kids these days. Centuries ago, when I was little I remember moaning every time my Mum took us to museum but today there is so much to interact with and enjoy. 

Some museums however, are even better than brilliant.

Gil's been loving his letter writing topic at school, and Ferdy's focus this week has been to form his letters in such a way that we might actually be able to read some of his splendid ideas, so a long awaited trip to the Postal Museum in London came at just the right time.

Our day at this unique place began with a ride on the Mail Rail which entailed a journey beneath the streets of London through hidden tunnels in the old mail train, used to transport all the post citywide. We pretended we were letters: Gil was a letter to Santa and Ferdy a letter to Dave Pilkey and were treated along the way to information about the 100 year old tunnels. The power cut was a little scary, although obviously we guessed it wasn't real...

But the adventure was just beginning. We boarded a travelling post office in order to sort the mail; became operators of the trains moving around the Mail Rail network shunting cars east and westbound through Mount Pleasant; met the Jolly Postman and a piece of post over 300 years old and learnt about how when letters started being sent, you had to pay to receive the letter, rather than send it, and how MPs could send and receive letters for free, yet the general public had to pay (one rule for them... hmm sounds familiar). We designed stamps with our own faces adorned with big lips and crowns; dressed up as an exceedingly dashing Mail Coach Guard (Gil) and a slightly cheeky Boy Messenger (Ferdy); joined the sorting office team gathering parcels from postboxes and sorting them at the depot, and Gil even managed to post the letter he had written to Santa.

Absolute best of all however, was the pneumatic tube transport system where a tube containing a handwritten message is sent whizzing from one side of the museum to the other and back again with the message having been read and replaced with a new one. Ferdy and Gil could have spent all day on this, especially when some other kids joined in. Ferdy's writing has never been so clear and legible.

Birthday research

 Today was about research.

Gil's been learning about animals, where they live and what they eat, so (after some maths on shapes) he chose five animals (lemurs, snow leopards, penguins, rhinos and orang-utans) to learn about. He discovered how to use an index in an animal encyclopedia, how to look up videos on youtube (supervised by Mum) and how to compile the information he'd acquired in note form.

Ferdy has been doing explanation texts at school and (after some rounding and subtraction in maths) chose today to research Leaf Cutter Ants and what they do with their leaves.

But really, the best way to learn about animals, is to see them. Sadly, we couldn't go to the rainforest, and it had to be Atherstone rather than Africa, so off we went to Twycross Zoo.

I wouldn't usually suggest doing research in the ladies toilets, but at Twycross, it is the best place to study Leaf Cutter Ants.

We noticed how initially they weren't carrying any leaves, but then quite a few of these reddish brown creatures started walking along the rope with large pieces of greenery. These were bigger ants and we spotted three different sizes; some were even carrying berries. Ferdy informed us that there can be over one million ants in one colony (and I noted that he hadn't just been watching Monster Bug Wars on youtube).

Deciding that it was best not to eat our lunch in the toilets, we then set out to explore the rest of the zoo and, despite the cold, wet weather, managed to see three out of five of Gil's animals: the penguins were being fed herrings and the rhino had a calf with it, so Gil was able to add those facts to his information sheet.

Later on, however, after Ferdy had put all his research into a piece of explanation text and Gil had written the diary of a lemur (he was dismayed to see the the lemur enclosure was closed as lemurs can get coronavirus too), the real research began...

It's no mean feat reading three of your birthday books simultaneously, but when you've spent most of your ninth birthday working hard and not looking at your presents, it's necessary.

Ferdy enters the scene, stage left.

 

We love the theatre. We've written about quite a few of our trips on this blog; one of our favourite places is Derby Theatre where our early flexischooling days began with Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Horrible Histories Deaf and Dead through to A Christmas Carol and The Jungle Book and we have plans to see Treasure Island at Christmas

This term, Ferdy is going to be learning about the features and layout of play scripts and using stage directions in text, so, imagine our excitement when the lovely backstage staff at the theatre agreed to let us have our own personal visit to discover how the stage works.

We were treated to our bespoke tour by Head of Lighting and Sound, Ele, who told us all about how the weight rigging system works enabling the cast to fly; how the set is brought up from the carpark in a gigantic lift and sometimes assembled in one day and how the set and props are built. We had taken some vocabulary cards with us with words such as stage left, backdrop, set, wings, props and auditorium written on them and Ferdy then went around the stage, placing them in their correct positions. He was also allowed to act out a little sketch on the stage about a clumsy man who kept slipping over (there was a slippy covering on the stage to flatten it out).

Our new friend Ele then took us into the control room and explained how the sound and lighting work, and we agreed that it was useful to have a loud voice like Ferdy's when you are acting. She had engaging answers for all Ferdy's questions like what would happen if someone was fast asleep in bed when they should be acting on stage, and Ferdy found it hilarious that once one of the child actors had been unable to act and the only person who could stand in for him was an adult... Ele didn't even mind when Ferdy requested she name all the characters in Treasure Island, and seemed to quite enjoy his idea that instead of her afternoon task of cutting the stage covering, she should go and write her own script for Treasure Island.

Inspired by his newly acquired knowledge of the stage, Ferdy later wrote a play script based on a Billy Whizz story in the Beano, and we built a stage set and made characters with which he could perform his play.

We are so grateful for this amazing opportunity, thanks a million Derby Theatre!

Beavers Unleashed*

Our day about beavers began on Thursday evening when we rushed back from school to watch a second pair of beavers being released by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust at Willington Wetlands.

The next morning (after our spellings, handwriting practice and maths), we gathered information to help us go and spot the beavers. With videos, we watched them building dams, living in lodges, gnawing bark and tending to their kits, and learnt how their reintroduction can help to reduce flooding, improve water quality and help create habitats for other animals. Using our map of all the rivers in the UK, we searched for the Trent and also used this as an opportunity to refresh Ferdy's river and lakes topic using vocab like springs and meander and source and look at where rivers start and how they eventually flow downhill into the sea ('because of Isaac Newton, Mummy').

Ferdy's been learning about character description at school and Gil's been doing adjectives so, in preparation for our writing later, our next task was to brainstorm all the adjectives and other vocab we had amassed relating to Eurasian beavers.

Spot Mum's typo...

Armed with binoculars, camouflage trousers and sandwiches, we set off to find these elusive, ecosystem engineers.

It was a long and muddy walk down a track, but we had read to search for evidence of them such as gnawed bark and branches, footprints and poo. Obviously, we saw all these things... Ferdy must have seen about 73 beavers including those from the Narnia books.

Gil is sure he saw a beaver in the water; he has the sharpest eyes of all and there was definitely something swimming around so we have decided to return at dusk one evening and try again.

Later on, Ferdy wrote a beautiful character description of these 'nocturnal, silent mammals', and Gil wrote a newspaper report by Ripoter Gil about the 'very, very, very, very dirty' beaver he saw and how Mummy 3/4 believed him.

*Gil's headline title is influenced by Dogman.

Plant Power

 Conveniently, both boys are learning about flowers, plants and place value this week at school, so it didn't require a huge amount of creative thought to plan some place value maths work and a visit to the botanical gardens.

Following some spellings and handwriting practice (Ferdy's handwriting seems to have somewhat deteriorated over the summer, perhaps due to six week without writing a single thing), we played Place Value Guess Who. It's self explanatory really: Gil's numbers were two digits and Ferdy's, four digits and we had to guess each other's numbers by asking questions like 'what is ten less than your number?' and 'how many hundreds does it have'. They could use dienes and column addition and subtraction if needed.

Our new audiobook is The Secret Garden so we listened to it on the way to the botanical gardens. I had forgotten how disagreeable and unpleasant poor little Mary Lennox is in the first half of the book so we talked a bit about how sometimes people are mean and grumpy to others because they are miserable and unhappy themselves.

After a miserable drive (which made Mum grumpy), the gardens were truly a breath of fresh air.

I had been worried that it would be difficult to capture their attention with plants and flowers, but I hadn't considered the carnivorous plants. Ferdy was enthralled by the Venus Fly Trap (middle picture) which we had to test out with bits of leaf and biro tips, and Gil was delighted to see pitcher plants in their natural habitat (we have some at home gobbling up the flies in our kitchen).

In addition to learning about these silent hunters, we befriended peacocks (Ferdy named one Dusty), Koi Carp, bumblebees, parakeets and squirrels; watched chrysalids hatching in the Butterfly House; balanced on rope bridges and climbed up the oak tree and conifer towers, looked at the autumnal blooming flowers like cosmos, echinaceas and rudbeckias (ok, this was more Mum than Ferdy and Gil who were more interested in the insects pollenating them and what would happen if a bumblebee fell in a fly trap) and discussed stories about fly traps named Len and Simon.

Dusty

The first full week back is often pretty tough as Ferdy finds the transition between home and school really hard, and Gil is happy but slightly unsettled by the adjustment from reception to year one, so running around and soaking up a bit of nature felt like the right thing to do.

And when Ferdy got stuck in the turnstile at the end of the day, after I had told him multiple times not to play with it, how could I really get cross when he retorted that he was like the fly in the fly trap?

More or less

 

From Antman to Alice in Wonderland via the Snail and the Whale and Aesop's the Lion and the Mouse, Ferdy and Gil have always been fascinated by scale. For a while, Ferdy's favourite creature was a tardigrade, and, after the question about who would win in a fight, they are constantly querying and comparing the sizes of animals and people. Gil still thinks that the biggest in the class is also the oldest.

Obviously, less than and more than comes up in maths a lot too, and today we looked at comparing fractions with different denominators. Ferdy struggled with this initially, but as is often the case, when we got out something for him to play with, he enjoyed working out whether 2/3 was bigger or smaller than 2/4.

Gil also did his own scaling up and down of numbers by adding and subtracting from 20 using a numberline.

After our maths, we began part two of our day about scale and headed out (befittingly with The Borrowers as our soundtrack) to the recently opened Museum of Making, and the Scale exhibition.

We spent a bit of time here, looking at models of churches and train stations and the boys were most intrigued by the photos by Slinkachu. 

But the absolute best thing in this marvellous new museum, was the Assemblage room on the floor below. This is a collection of about 1000 seemingly random objects ranging from porcelain monkeys to telephone switchboards, all grouped according to the material that they are made of and displayed in an open museum store room. Sounds a bit boring? Not when there is an electronic database which members of the public (children) can use to create their own trails. Ferdy spent ages looking for objects and printing them out on lists (so many lists..) and Gil and I had to use the letter and number coordinates on the wall to find his objects. I've never been so excited to find a Midland Rail Lever Pull Plate (located A3, Drawer 1) in my life.

Influenced by Slinkachu's photos, we later created our own; Gil put himself in the fridge, and Ferdy at the front of a line up of playmobil Vikings.

Gil then wrote a rather funny story about getting bigger and smaller:

Once upon a time there was a boy who was a ordinary boy but you will notice that I will
not always be a ordinary boy. That boy once got shot by a witch snd he became a little
boy. Just as he was opening the fridge door, he became little and just then he felt a tingly
feeling and he began to get big and soon he was back to normal size but the only problem
was that the fridge was broken.

And Ferdy used his photo to write a Beowulf inspired story about Ferdy the brave hero who met Vikings and defeated a Worrot and his avenging mother, perhaps encompassing nicely a few of the lessons we have learnt both at home and school this term.

This was our last flexi day this term, we'll return in September unless we manage a summer flexi extravaganza (as we did a few years ago) in a more adventurous summer than last year.