A Summer Holiday Special: Once upon a time in Denmark

Ferdy's year has been dominated by a quite few topics but those that stand out are Star Wars, Lego, stories (particularly about Vikings), fairy tales and Greek and Norse Mythology. Flexischooling doesn't necessarily stop over the holidays, so what better place to take the boys for lego immersive, viking influenced, enchantment seeped extravaganza, than Denmark.

We went to Finland together last year - Billy can't take any time off until the end of the summer so it's an adventure just for us three - on a Moomins pilgramage, and it had been quite a lot of fun so the plan was to do a similar thing ie using public transport, staying in a few places and trying to be as intrepid as is possible with a four and six year old (hence Scandinavia not Sudan).

Our first stop was LegoLand, in Billund (which calls itself Capital of Children).

Fundamentally, LegoLand is a theme park. Although quite enjoyable, a couple of hours was enough for someone who doesn't like heights (me), someone who is only just 100cm tall (Gil) so can't go on a lot of rides, and someone who doesn't love crowds or fast rides.

I think we may have enjoyed the dot to dot in the hotel room and chocolate spread breakfast and delicious supper with beer and chips more.

The next day we set off for Odense (named after the Danish God Odin, one of the most powerful Gods in Norse mythology, and has been one of the coveted Gods in our house this year, along with Yoda and Zeus).


This involved a bus to Vejle and then a train to Odense.

Our Hans Christian Andersen (HCA) pilgrimage began with meeting the Great Dane himself.

Ferdy loved spotting the sculptures all around the city of characters from all his stories, and as well as visiting the museum, we also found his birthplace and an utterly serendipitous place called the Tinderbox. The Tinderbox, housed within the Møndergarden, is a rabbit warren of storytelling and playing and immersion in fairy tales and feasts and magic.

Top: The Bat King selects his food. Bottom l-r: a puppet show performed by Ferdy; playing a treasure hunt game;
setting the table for the feast; the Minotaur in his den; contemplating the next story.

We could have moved in there.

The next day, in search of more adventures, we went to the Funen Village, a 19th century farming village which would have existed in the time of Hans Christian Andersen. Our journey consisted of a walk down to the river, a boat along the Odense River, spotting mermaids (if mermaids live anywhere inland, it must be in the place where HCA wrote the story) and red pandas (past a zoo) along the way and then a walk through the woods. And a not insignificant amount of moaning and 'carry me's.

When we finally got there, we were just in time for a show about a man who kept trying to perform The Little Match Girl but was constantly being disturbed by other characters in the HCA tales. I think. It was all in Danish; we didn't understand a word and I don't think I have ever seen Gil laugh so much.

I could write a whole blog about each of the places that we went to in Denmark (I won't because I want to get on with my summer), but needless to say, we had a brill time discovering the village, riding on the horse and trap, weaving in and out of the gardens, reading fairy tales and doing jigsaws in the schoolroom ('please don't make me do any writing Mummy'), eating lunch in the candlelit cafe, finding a hidden tree playground in the woods.

It was back to Billund the next day, and this time to take in Lego House.

Sorry, I mean the brilliantly innovative, epicly awesome (can one even say that?), stimulatingly vibrant, architectural and interior design masterpiece that is LegoHouse.

What. A. Place.

This place is as much for parents as for kids (is it even for kids...?), which is rare in our experience. It is divided into different zones with abundant lego related activities, lego bricks galore and nothing you can't touch. We were even allowed to eat ice creams whilst making Lego ships.

tl clockwise: dinosaur sculptures made of guess what; the Lego tree reaching from the bottom to the top of the house;
making minifigures; looking at all the Star Wars minifures; making a ship; running in the rain; our pufferfish;
reading about a Lego Zeus; reading a lot more books (if possible every book there please Mummy).

I was far too busy to take many photos, but we made lego insects disco dance and race, we created a lego pufferfish which featured in a seascape film, we invented mini figures to go on the front of magazines and we even found an exhibition of every Star Wars mini figure that has even been made (over 1500 in total although I had to draw the line at us standing there naming each one and the film in which they feature). In true Ferdy fashion he spent a lot of time in the lego book corner and managed to bring all his interests together by sniffing out Lego Greek Mythology books and Lego Fairy Tale books - please imagine how unglamourous Cinderella's slipper was.

I could go on as I haven't even mentioned our evening meals (they are very important especially when they involve Danish beer for Mum) and the lovely people we met, and the words we learnt, and the books we read, and the slow motion fights in windmills and then fast motion fights in windmills (Ferdy & Gil) and the yoga in hotel lobby doorways (Ferdy) and the bedtime map game, and the laughing and crying (me..), but I won't because this post is too long already and it's time to end the story.

After the rain

It may have been the last day of term this Friday, and it may have rained rather a lot, but that didn't stop us having a day packed with activities.

Granny was staying and, after attending Ferdy's school assembly, we headed out to Ilam.

This is how you cope with rain

There was a lot of moaning and complaining on the journey and although it was partially drowned out by our new book, How to Seize a Dragon's Jewel, it started up again when we arrived in a torrential downpour.

Rain doesn't deter us (me) though so we covered ourselves with rain clothes, ignored the moaning and off we went.

We climbed rocks:

 

We balanced on walls:








We played poohsticks:

We even got lost in the rainforest:

And when your hands are so cold so you can't feel them, there is a special Granny hand hold which means 'none of your hand skin goes near the cold or wet'.

Everything looked so green and beautiful, and, to quote Eeyore (because we played poohsticks), 'the nicest thing about the rain is that it stops. Eventually', which it did. 

And after the rain comes jumping in puddles, and brownies for lunch, and reading books to Gil in the cafe, and supper in the pub, and ice cream, and late nights and late mornings.

And the long, long summer holidays. Whoop whoop!

A Wild Still Life

Having been ill at the beginning of the week, Ferdy went into school this Friday, hence no proper blog. However, he came to my art class with me on Tuesday afternoon and did this, rather beautiful still life drawing of a vase of wild flowers.

My favourite bit is the 3D glass which, when he had nearly finished and I was pondering how to start my own drawing, he showed me how to do.

This is the boy who, a year ago, could barely hold a pencil.

All good days begin with a story...

And ours began with the Secret of Black Rock, read by Ferdy.

We love this modern tale, which is about a little girl who discovers the truth about the legend of the spiky Black Rock in the sea near her fishing village.

Then it was out to Pickfords House Museum, a Georgian town house showing how a professional Georgian family lived. I never know whether a museum is going to be interesting for a 4 and 6 year old, but they really loved exploring this house, especially when they realised that two boys aged 6 and 10 had lived there.

tl clockwise: the dining room; down the the servants' quarters and kitchen;
looking at the model theatres; playing in the playroom; trying on costumes.

We read a story about A Special Day at Pickford's house, from the point of view of Joseph Pickford and we discussed their life and the fact that they didn't even have a telly on which to watch PJ Masks. Ferdy took pictures of all the rooms and was intrigued by the pineapple taking centre stage on the dining room table.

Upstairs is a room full of model theatres showing traditional tales, and I was treated to my weekly show:

Even the small garden was the perfect place to play tag.

Later on and as it was a hot day, we decided to get the sprinkler out in the garden and to learn a little about volume. Ferdy had to guess how many 200ml cup fulls of water filled a small bucket, and a watering can, before he measured them out.

x7 cups fill the red bucket

And the day ended by writing a book review.

The Tale of Two Brothers

When Ferdy was about three he became rather consumed by the Beatrix Potter books. He had received all the original tales for his third birthday, and we also got him the audiobooks. I soon regretted this. Despite the lovely stories and sophisticated vocabulary, some of them are slightly tiresome to read, especially when you have to read four books an hour. And when they were lost on a rather high shelf, I was in no rush to take them down.

It was therefore with a little trepidation that, when Ferdy requested a Beatrix Potter day, I sought out the books again.

The Tale of Jeremy Fisher

He was quite excited to realise that he could actually read some of them himself, and read us half of The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher and all of The Story of Miss Moppet. What a relief that he can now read...

Then it was off to Calke Abbey (with the Beatrix Potter audiobook for our journey) for Mr. Ptolemy Tortoise (Ferdy) and Peter Rabbit (Gil) to seek out their friends.

We found Squirrel Nutkin's tree (top left), they ran away from Mummy McGregor in her vegetable garden (top right), located and fished for minnows in Mr Jeremy Fisher's pond (bottom right) and even discovered Peter Rabbit's father's secret network of tunnels (bottom left).

We also saw an array of butterflies including some common blues mating, and although we were a little tempted to copy Mr. Jeremy Fisher and make butterfly sandwiches for lunch, we decided that there are no longer enough insects to do things like that. And that we already had cheese sandwiches.

Watching butterflies

Both boys remained in character for most of the day, and later on, when I was saying goodnight to Ferdy and he told me lovingly that my top was like butterflies and my arms were as soft as rabbits (?!), I felt that we really had immersed ourselves in the world of Beatrix Potter.

How to Train Your Children

The current obsession in our house is the How to Train your Dragon books, which we listen to in the car on the way to and from school, in the playroom before and after school and at bedtime every night. Ferdy's excuse for not being able to read his own writing is that Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third (the hero) can't either. We are currently on book 8 (we have had a few long car journeys) but the first book begins with the young Vikings trying to train their untrainable dragons, and Hiccup works out that actually the best way to train his maverick dragon Toothless, is to be nice to him and treat him with respect, rather than 'yell', the one word instruction in the tome used by Vikings for many years.. I sometimes find myself needing some tips from Hiccup.

It's proving a bit tricky to get Ferdy to do things at home at the moment, and he once again seems to be very tired and getting upset about doing any work related stuff. So, after some yelling (only joking), we decided to play a Vikings game. He and Gil set up their Viking ship (The Hopeful Puffin) to set off on a voyage to America.

tl-br: setting up The Hopeful Puffin; Stoick the Vast;
sailing in the Green Sea; the ship sets sail

Ferdy's been learning about positions at school and we'd watched a few videos earlier, so the (Mummy) goddess Aphrodite (my name chosen by Ferdy but I'm not complaining about being associated with the beautiful Goddess of Love) shouted out positions from the sky 'turn a quarter left, a quarter right, half right, full turn etc' and displayed cards with things like 'straight on, up, down, beside etc directing them towards the treasure/glasses case with Smarties in.

Just because there is a How to Train Your Dragon obsession in our house, it doesn't mean Star Wars has been forgotten about so Ferdy then read us a book and did some writing (albeit a bit reluctantly) about Luke's Jedi training. And I learnt that when you want to write a capital A, you have to turn your page upside down and write a V first...

Then it was off to the library to read books to a carrot.

Our afternoon's activity was to see Horrible Histories Dreadful Deaf at Derby Theatre. It was all about deaf people in history, of which not much has been recorded. We'd discussed a little in the morning about what being deaf was and also watched a video about a deaf boy communicating in sign language with his classmates, who had learnt some. Both boys were quite intrigued although Gil did shout 'is him deaf?' quite a lot whilst we queued up to go in to the theatre.

We learnt some good facts like that the Romans didn't let deaf people marry or have children; that Alexander Graham Bell (who invented the telephone) got the use of sign language banned and claimed that all deaf people should be taught to speak (despite having a deaf wife and mother); that Prince Phillip's mother was deaf, and that it's funny to shout Deaf and Dead at the end of a story...

It was a good lesson in historical oppression, something I don't think kids are ever too young to learn about. And also in treating people kindly and with respect. In book 7 of How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup (the hero) gets a slave mark, and later as an old man and great King and leader, he suggests that all kings should perhaps get a slave mark so that they understand what it is like to be oppressed. He's a wise man, that Hiccup is, who needs to read their own writing anyway...?

Rain, raining. Rain, raining. Rain, raining.

We decided to embrace the rain today.

Since we saw Michael Rosen at Hay, Ferdy's been looking up a lot of his poems and one of his favourites, which we found this week, is The Rains. Ferdy loves his voice where he says about the rain stopping, 'there were birds! It was light, warm in the sleeping bag, cold on our faces'. And whenever I've heard the rain this weekend (which has been often), I drum 'Rain, raining. Rain raining' in my head.

We'd been to Ferdy's Fathers' Day service at school this Friday and Ferdy is always a little edgy (and grumpy) after an hour of sitting down, so, armed with raincoats, wellies and lunch, we went straight out to search for rain (our obvious theme for the day), muddy puddles, things that like rain (ducks, geese, slugs) at the Wolseley Wildlife Centre.

tl-bl clockwise: the biggest muddy puddle; looking at bank voles; building a den;
in the meadow; in the tunnels; drawing the weather (sun, rain and rainbow)

Finding rain wasn't hard, and, thanks to one of the regular birdwatchers at the centre, we found a few extra things like baby bank voles (look closely in above top middle pictures), some muddy tunnels, a large den, a robin and a flash of kingfisher. Ferdy was most excited about the bank voles to whom he fed some of his duck food.

Back at home we measured how much rain we'd caught in cups placed outside. Annoyingly the rain stopped in the afternoon so we only got about 25ml.

We read some fact books about the water cycle (unpopular because they weren't stories) and then some other books with stories about rain in them (popular because they were stories). Favourites were The Rhythm of the Rain, a beautiful retelling of the water cycle, and Sam Usher's Rain.

It wasn't easy to get Ferdy to do any writing today, he seems to have decided that he can't write again (writing currently is a very loud affair with lots of ohohohohohs and OOOOOPSes whenever he forgets to space his words, writes a letter the wrong way around or forgets a capital), so instead of a poem (which we'd agreed on the day before), we compromised on him writing 10 words describing rain and the sound of rain. My favourite is pffffffff. Michael Rosen didn't start writing poems 'til he was 11 anyway, so there's loads of time...