The Story of Ferdinand

Amazon.co.uk

A true classic with a timeless message, The Story of Ferdinand has enchanted readers since it was first published in 1936. All the other bulls would run and jump and butt their heads together. But Ferdinand would rather sit and smell the flowers. So what will happen when our pacifist hero is picked for the bullfights in Madrid? 

This was actually our August row but I haven't had chance to blog the detail until now. We found a useful library book with lots of information about Spain, which we read alongside Ferdinand. We enjoyed the food element of looking at Spain. We made churros - tube shaped doughnuts with chocolate sauce and paella after Harry saw the picture in our library book and thought it looked tasty!

Harry also painted a Spanish flag which we stuck on the kitchen door for the week. We decided that we like the flag as it has bright, cheerful colours. We used some Spanish words, following on from looking at the Mexico culture box, including thank you, hello, goodnight, see you later and please. 

We used some story picture cards borrowed from a friend to act out scenes from the story. Harry was being Ferdinand quietly smelling the flowers.

Stuart joined in before leaving for work and was being one of the other bulls sticking his horns around. Peter found the whole thing quite bemusing!

We read about cork trees on wikipedia and I asked Harry if he could see any differences between the real cork trees and the pictures of the cork trees in the story. We agreed that the real cork comes from the bark of the tree but the story shows corks hanging from the tree in bunches. We completed a true/false fact sheet about cork.

We talked about what cork is used for and Harry played with some wine bottle corks - he said they felt light and foamy and thought they would float. He played with them and also with a corkscrew for a good half an hour in a tray of water, pushing them around and under the water.

Harry loves making up stories which he dictates for me to write so this fantasy story activity in the style of Ferdinand from Homeschool Share was perfect. Here is Harry's story about Flowery the Owl. 

Once upon a time in America, there was a little owl and his name was Flowery.

All the other little owls would hoot all day but not Flowery. He liked to sit in the tallest tree and eat raspberries and not make any sound at all.

Sometimes Flowery's mother would worry about him. She would say "why don't you come down from the tall tree and flap and hoot and twit-twoo?" But she saw that he was happy, so she understood, even though she was a bird.

As the years went by, Flowery grew and grew until he was big and strong and he still sat in his tall tree. One day Flowery decides to visit a different tree and he meets a black bird called Soary (because he can soar in the sky). Soary teaches Flowery to soar like him. The other owls see and are sad they have never heard Flowery's soft hotting. They teach Flowery how to hoot, so he can fly and read letters without his mother. 

The end part about reading letters is rather strange :-)

Floury fun!

We had an impromptu game of 'flour snow' this week, which started when Harry walked the goose he was playing with through the flour I had out on the table for my pizza dough. Peter soon realised fun was to be had and joined in with a penguin! They showered, buried and fed the creatures with flour snow.

After wandering off, Peter realised that his floury hands made marks on the hall carpet, which was very popular with him! We ended up with a hall full of foot and hand prints.

Harry did all the cleaning up too! This was the sort of activity I probably never would have planned and I would have perceived a very high hassle factor but it was great and they both had fun investigating on their own. The mess was pretty well contained to the kitchen and hoovered up really easily from the carpet.

Happy camping

We spent the weekend camping in the Lake District with some home ed friends - so nice to be surrounded by hills, mountains and lakes and listening to the sheep/birds/cows as we went to sleep - this was the kind of holiday my family took when we were children and I have some very good memories of outdoor adventures in Wales and the Lakes.

It was the first camping trip since I was pregnant with Peter and I think that, although it went well, we definitely need to invest in our camping kit for next time - top of the list being table and chairs so we are not trying to eat on the floor! It would have been great to stay two nights instead of a rather rushed one, but Stuart had to work on Monday.  

Harry enjoyed helping to put up the tent

Peter found a large stick to attack it with!

Lovely visit to Aira Force waterfall with my dad, who came down from Annan to visit

Kite flying in pretty high winds back at the site. I was glad it was my dad helping Stuart to take down the tent while I sheltered in the car with the boys! The wind carried the kite onto the aerial of a neighbouring cottage so my dad performed a wall jumping manoeuvre to get it back - good work from granddad!

Puffy painting

Puffy painting has been on my list to try for a while and we had a couple of spare hours yesterday so we had a go. We mixed shaving foam, glue and paint to make our puffy mixture and they really seemed to enjoy it. Harry enjoyed the mixing element - he loves it when we make potions and Peter seemed to like the feel of it much more than normal paint. They created some pretty bubblegum colours and we were interested in the fact that the colours stay stripy and swirly if you don't fully mix it all.

Gymnastics

Harry had his first gymnastics session today at Benfield School sports centre, which is a short walk away and is home to the City of Newcastle Gymnastics Academy. The group of around 20 small boys pottered off with the leaders and parents were all left behind the windows to observe. Harry got to try all of the equipment including pommel horse, vault and parallel bars - I was actually quite jealous! He is looking forward to next week and it will be interesting to see what he will be able to do by Christmas. I was really proud to see him taking part on his own without me even in the room and he seemed very confident.

Pool party!

We are trying to make the most of some lovely September sun at the moment and spent several hours yesterday at the beach with friends. It was really hot on Sunday so we made a dash to Sainsbury's to see if there were any paddling pools left in store. The only thing they had was a huge family pool, but for the bargain price of £5 I had to bring it home! The boys had a great time splashing around all afternoon.

School starts!

We had a lovely get together with some of my NCT group at Jesmond Dene on Friday. We have been friends since pregnancy and have had lots and lots of group play with the children, nights out, Christmas and birthday parties and the birth of several siblings. The time has come for the children to start school next week and this has understandably been a hot topic of conversation within this group of friends for some months, so it has got me thinking in depth about our plans for September and going forward. I am really pleased that we made the decision to home educate over a year ago as my thinking time since then has all been really positive and focussed on what we want to achieve and how, rather than all of the 'what if?' questions I had before then.

Harry knows that these friends are starting school and that he also has friends who won't be going to school and he seems fine with that. It seemed a good time to introduce a couple of new elements which we will try for at least a couple of months to see if they work for us. I have made a very simple calendar which I will set up each night to show Harry what we will be doing during the day. There are pictures for most of the things we do and places we visit. Obviously lots of free play at home and some unplanned things will still happen around that but he often asks what we are doing tomorrow and what day it is so this will hopefully cement a bit of understanding in that respect.

I am also going to use a workbox each day to hold the 'work' I would like to cover. This will be really helpful for me as I like to have a vague plan for the day and will contain something every day, although I do plan to include treats sometimes rather than work! The work at the moment is mainly going to be a few literacy or numeracy activities and will also include our Five in a Row activities when we are in the process of doing them, or work based on any projects we may be doing. Harry's box is ready for tomorrow with some reading eggs worksheets and an activity from Ferdinand, which we are rowing.

Harry starts classes next week too and will be doing gymnastics, enjoy-a-ball and tennis (he was already doing the latter two last term), together with French. I am still planning to use Five in a Row on a monthly basis as we get on really well with it and we will be attending local workshops with other home ed families, probably on a monthly basis.

So, alongside all that we have time for play at home and away and with friends, craft, baking, riding bikes, getting wet and muddy and spending lots of time together and I can't wait to see how Harry and Peter develop this year!