Ay ay may I play Jumping Clay today..

Ferdy is still doing a lot of mirror writing so our day started with him practising writing the letters a, b, d, g & s with our friend George who was staying.

He seems to find the s particularly impossible to get the right way around, even when he watches someone else write it. It's really hard to teach him because it feels like we're making him do something totally against his instincts.

After some number work at my computer, instigated by Ferdy, we went off to do some Jumping Clay.




This is a home ed group and they focus on a topic which lasts three weeks; we were in the last week so caught the tail end of it which had been all about food and where it comes from, how it's made etc.

We've done it before, primarily to help with his fine motor skills but, when he wasn't distracted by all the Jumping Clay characters around the room from his favourite books, Ferdy quite enjoyed talking about bacteria and then moulding a petri dish for it. 

Even better, however, was creating a character from one of his favourite stories (Sticky Beaked Sid from Open The Door in the Slinky Malinki series) and then listening to the story making Sticky Beaked Sid act it out - oh how Ferdy loves a story.

We're off to Hay on Wye for the book festival next Friday, so will be writing a special Hay Festival blog covering a whole week of storytelling. We're attending readings and performances by; Julia Donaldson, Michael Rosen, Sarah Cruddas (books about space), Andy Stanton (new Mr Gum books), Yuval Zommer (Big Book of Birds), plus we're doing some foraged art, going to a folk concert about nature and landscape and meeting Tove Jannsen (who wrote the Moomins)'s granddaughter. All surrounded by probably a lot of rain...

Us caught on the Hay festival camera last year

And what do you do with this leftover goo?...

Both boys have been wanting me to read The Lorax (quoted in the title) countless times this week, and with all the kids' protests about climate change happening on Fridays around the world, I have been feeling we should somehow have an eco Friday.

However, an eco Friday could really mean anything from looking at green energy, the food we eat, protecting our wildlife (or lack of it), to recycling, understanding climate change.. the list is endless. And whilst I quite like the idea of us joining the climate change protesters on a Friday, I think that Ferdy and Gil are too young to understand it all and I have to be careful not to project my own beliefs onto theirs, before they've even had a chance to form them. Better to just incorporate thinking about the environment into our Fridays for the moment.

So we read a few more books focussing on the plight of the environment: The Green Giant and Pesky Plastic, which is about different animals around the world thinking plastic is food. Ferdy's also learning about adjectives at school so we had to shout whenever we read one (who can ignore the The Lorax's rippulous pond and smogulous smoke).

Then, after a trip to the library, we went out to look for some trees at the Buddhist Centre.

On the 50m walk between our car and the entrance, we managed to pick up a bag's worth of people's leftover goo - crisp packets, plastic bags etc on the roadside.

Boy vs. Nature

There are some fine and majestic trees at the Buddhist Centre, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We tried to climb the trees, bashed them with a litter picker (not quite appropriate for an eco day), gathered leaves and daisies, made friends with a cat, hid behind the trees, got stung by stinging nettles, spotted butterflies and ladybirds, and ate beans on toast in the cafe.

Later on, at Ferdy's request we made some leaf paintings and had a gloomy conversation about a world without trees (we would all die wouldn't we Mummy). 

The Lorax was written in 1971 and we have been destroying our planet every since then. But essentially it ends in hope with the Once-ler (factory man) passing on the very last Truffula Seed to a young boy so he can plant a new Truffula Tree and, 'Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back'.

Perhaps it doesn't need to be complicated with kids, perhaps we can start with small things like picking up litter, appreciating wildlife and nature and thinking about recycling and reusing, borrowing or mending things before we buy new ones. We agreed that we'd all like the Lorax to come back.

It's what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

This blog could have been about how we went to see the Sandmartins nesting near Nottingham this Friday, and how we spotted herons, snails and slugs on a woodland walk. Or it could have been about the division by sharing that Ferdy requested we do before we go out, (although that may have been a bit boring).

But it's actually going to have to be about reading.

As mentioned a few times, Ferdy has not wanted to learn to read at all. He managed to spend his first year at school not reading any of the books that he brought home, and seems to have been extremely successful in getting us to read to him all the time, whilst totally ignoring all mention of looking at words or letters.

He has quite recently, encouraged by speech bubbles in The Beano, started to read properly. But since Easter (when no one was paying any attention to his reading) things have abruptly clicked and he is suddenly spelling out and reading everything he can see. 

In the last 24 hours tl clockwise to middle: reading instead of going to bed; reading instead of getting up;
reading to Gil instead of eating breakfast; reading in the car; reading instead of eating supper; reading in a cafe;
reading instead of lunch; reading when we got home; reading in the evening...

Ferdy didn't walk until he was nearly two; we were seeing a paediatrician as he showed no signs of walking at all. She suggested some exercises, which he wouldn't do. One day, when I was on the phone, he got up, walked past me in the kitchen, through the hallway and into the garden. I had never seen him walk before. He walked everywhere from that moment onwards. 

He is my son, so of course I think he's pretty amazing, but I am in awe of his ability to do things when he is ready, and only then, despite all the pressure surrounding him. Who knows what our children could become if we gave them the resources, but left them to do things at their own pace?

(title quote copyright Oscar Wilde)

Ruler

Sorry this blog is a bit late (and short!) this week as we've been distracted by the Easter hols, but it's for Friday 12th April.

Ferdy's been struggling to write his letters and numbers the right way round (he often automatically goes from left to right despite being right handed) so our day started with some practise writing 2s, 3s, 5s and 9s.

We then went out to do some measuring:

This daffodil is 30cm high

We measured how far each of us could jump.










Ferdy also told me that he'd been learning about toys from 'not now' at school so we went into the toy museum at Sudbury Hall. We often go to this museum and have favourite bits like: the chimney, which you can go up as a Victorian child chimney sweep would have done; the Star Wars collection (surprise, surprise); the book and dressing up room; and the film about all the toys which were collected by Betty Cadbury. But there's often something new too, and today we played for ages with the puppet show. My entertainment was a sophisticated performance about a princess who was actually a brave knight ruler, and a wicked wizard who died and the knight then hid inside him to capture the dragon. I love a story about a strong female ruler.

Happy Easter!

Back on Friday 3rd May.

Tales of the Unexpected

There are some days where I thank whomever looks down on us - Yoda, Zeus or most recently Loki in our household - for our Fridays. They are often hard work, sometimes disappointing and periodically we all fall out... But on occasion things come together beautifully and we have an unexpectedly blissful and productive day.

Looking at the trams

The day commenced by looking at the ten times table. Ferdy recently said to me that he doesn't like that wobbly cross next to the numbers, which I think means he doesn't like times tables. Often when he doesn't like something it's because he doesn't understand it so we tried to punctuate the day with times tables without him really noticing.

The perfect bridge for playing Billy Goats Gruff

Our trip out today was to the Crich Tramway Village. As usual we first went to the playground.









We then caught a tram to Wakebridge to investigate the sculpture trail.

Wow. It was great! A lovely trail through the woods where we encountered loads of different unexpected and magical creatures.

At a clearing we found a mushroom circle and some giant dominoes. Ferdy invented a game where we had to add up the dots on the dominoes and only then, could we step onto the next one.

And there was a spiral of rocks where we had to get all the way to the middle without touching the ground.

After lunch we checked out the museums, most fascinating was the huge pile of horse poo and wee collected from the streets in Victorian times.

Left: poo; right: large jar of wee

That was a great day, I was told on the way home. And later on the great day got even greater when Ferdy and I went to see the Jungle Book at Derby Theatre in the evening. It was brill but is another story which involves chanting 2 and 10 times tables in the taxi, Magnum ice creams and Prosecco. Need I say more.

We are living in a material world

We attended Ferdy's Mother's Day service at school today, which was rather nice. Especially seeing as when it was his turn he said 'I love my Mummy because she gives me kisses', rather than 'I love my Mummy because she wipes my bottom', which he'd told me he was going to say. I had been on tenterhooks...

Me, according to Ferdy. Apparently he'd like me to 
have yellow hair. I have got long, (going grey) brown hair

The weather was beautiful so we went out straight afterwards.

Ferdy's been learning about materials and their properties this week so we decided to go on a materials hunt.

tl clockwise: fabric; paper; stones; glass; sand; bricks

We discussed that materials are man made and natural, and also how things can be man made using natural materials, and even found willow domes which are man made structures using living materials.

These willow structures also worked well as Luke's homestead on Tatooine

Sadly, plastic featured heavily throughout our materials search, but we had brought our litter picker (given to me by a friend for my birthday..), which also doubled up as a large shooter when Han Solo appeared.

The bears danced off through the woods

I was treated to my Friday outdoor show - today it was Goldilocks and the Three Bears - and over lunch we were read some stories, with actual reading...

And later on both boys really got involved with materials by immersing themselves in a pile of stones.

Back at home Ferdy printed up some of our pictures of materials and wrote about some of their properties (is sand, sandy?). 

When asked what we had learnt about today, Ferdy replied, 'adjectives and litter'. Hmm, ok, well, kind of.

(material)

Not doing things by halves

Our day began with some reading, and some fractions.

We learnt about halves and quarters, which seemed to suddenly be quite easy when chocolate buttons were involved. I decided then that we should learn about thirds too..

Ferdy's started rather enjoying reading; he has realised that reading might actually be useful when trying to find out what Beano, Dandy and other cartoon characters are saying.

It wasn't raining today and we haven't managed to get out much in the last few weeks so we decided to have an outdoors day at Shugborough Hall.

Balancing and climbing

Shugborough has a rare breed farm and a lovely farm museum all about the workers on a Victorian farm and their daily routine throughout the seasons.

tl-br: making up a farm story; looking at the different farm animal babies;
my show about Mr Gum; Ferdy as an Under Dairymaid

Ferdy became the Under Dairymaid and I was treated to a show all about Mr Gum on the Farm (don't ask why..).

Whenever we go anywhere on a Friday it's pretty quiet and we often get to chat to people; I think they're often quite intrigued when Ferdy explains about our 'not at school, school day' (or they're just being polite). Both boys have recently become much less shy and Ferdy told the staff about how much he'd enjoyed the museum.

But the abiding memory of the day was encountering Baxter the dog outside the cafe, and feeding him dog biscuits supplied by his very kind owner.

 

Ferdy enjoyed meeting him so much he took his picture, drew a picture of him and then voluntarily wrote 'Baxter is grey and furry. I stroked him and gave him a dog biscuit'.