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 :-)