Gruffalo Storyboards

Yesterday was another really easy going day at home school. We had lots of fun creating story boards using pictures from the children's old Gruffalo themed Christmas calendars.

Before that though it was business as usual at breakfast. The rabbits joined us for pancakes and smoothies, although why one of them was sat in such a perculiar position is beyond me!

We then had to submit our results from the Big Garden Bird Watch. Jenson got out his bird puzzle, which was a brilliant charity shop find from a few years ago. He then built the birds, read the letters out aloud to me and pieced the sounds together to say the word. Sorry Biff and Chip but your days are numbered in our house. We then tried to see if we could spot any birds from the puzzles that were on our Big Garden Bird Watch list. A robin was the only one.

Next Jenson filled out our Big Garden Bird Watch form. He correctly filled out the numbers in the boxes, although he does get confused with the number 2 and often writes it back to front.

Next we did a bit of geography in the form of drawing maps before more writing. Jenson was once again keen to dish out presents to his friends only this time it was a gift that Wren had wrapped up and he had very kindly offered to write the label.  

While Jenson chose the gifts that he wanted to wrap up and hand out to his friends, Wren helped make some story boards. It was really good fun and great to give her imagination free reign as she plucked out characters willy nilly, making up a random story as she went along. Although doing his own thing, just by sitting with us, Jenson would occasionally throw in the odd plot suggestion!  He wasn't interested in writing the words that filled the gaps between the pictures so I did it.

The first story Wren made up was about a bunny that ran away from an evil owl that wanted to eat it! Thankfully fox saved the day! It was great to see her cast the fox as the hero; since our chickens got eaten by Mr Fox she has become very scared of them. The story had a happy ending whereby the Gruffalo's child and bunny had a picnic with a couple of bats. 

Inspired by his sister's story telling, Jenson didn't want to miss out on the fun. He decided he would write his own story too, but Jenson being Jenson he had to do it in his own way: a mini flip book that comprised four little pictures of the Gruffalo, a pair of bats, a hedgehog and another pair of bats. 

He managed to write the first sentence yesterday before tiring and loosing concentration and so we came back to the rest of the story this afternoon. He's getting very familiar with the different letters now, except for 'f' and 'p' which we clearly don't use very much! It just goes to show that the writing and phonics intervention he was receiving at school was totally uncalled for because it wasn't a case that he couldn't do it, he just couldn't concentrate for as long as the other children.   

We finally made it out just before lunch when we hand delivered Jenson's presents. First stop was Robin's house where he left this little creation on their door stop. The pink egg contains a chocolate coin, which apparently Robin wolfed down!!

Next was Angus and Hector's house, where their Mum, Lou, answered the door. I got a nice text off Lou later that evening saying how much Angus had loved the marshmallows, which had been hidden inside a kinder egg surprise! Today, Jenson received back from Angus the same egg box but brimming with lollies and love hearts!!  

Finally we stopped off at Henry's house where Jenson left a skewer full of marshmallows taped to an old toothpaste cardboard box!

Henry lives just a few streets away from Montpellier park so we spent the afternoon playing in the sunshine, meeting Daddy for lunch and generally chilling.

Doggy is one of their favourite games. It basically involves one of them playing the role of the master, (usually Jenson) and the other the dog, (usually Wren). They take each other for walks, play catch and generally act like a pair of hounds! They've not done it in public before and we got a few smiles as Jenson dragged Wren around the floor of the playground by the scruff of the neck of her t-shirt! 

Walking home and the children came across this old sofa that had been dumped outside the salvage shop in the Suffolks. It was clearly a great place to rest after their antics in the park!