Walk in the park!

We did some really excellent maths work this morning. It started off pretty badly, Caden didn't want to be torn from his Mario Kart game. We persevered and managed to get a really fun game out of it. The 'lesson' was working out the area of a rectangle. We found that filling the rectangles was tedious when it was larger than about 4 squares (we had to move the squares into the boxes to count the number that filled the space). Once we realised that the length and width multiplied calculated the area, and Caden realised that all the answers were on his multiplication table, we stuck the table to the wall and each time we calculated the length and width Caden raced to the table and used his fingers to work out the total. He was so excited that he didnt need to use 'maths in his head' to work out the answers. A bit like using a calculator. It was very exciting to see that the answers were right each time. So today we did capacity and area in maths. 

Reading consisted of a page from his skylanders book (perfectly adequate as there were many words he didn't know and could practise) and a few signs on our walk this afternoon. 

Our walk this afternoon...  It was lovely weather. We had lovely company with Bx and family and the park was spacious and fun. 

Here are some things we did. 

Drinking apple juice under the canal bridge. 

Racing each other doing the funky chicken and flapping wings like a bird. 

We talked about what a weir is and what we build them for. To measure water depth and flow. Hence Gauging station. 

We found what we thought was a few Fly Agaric mushrooms. We talked about deadly mushrooms and then found loads of different kinds of fungi on the walk. 

Then the stick fights began. The kids fashioned huge lances out of dried cow parsley stalks, shook off the seeds and then had battles. Everyone got hurt I think. I guess they learn but it was fairly fraught! 

Then a huge blackberry picking session, Miles ate so many (again) he would live off them if he could I think. Matthew very sweetly picked dozens of them along the way and then presented them to Miles who was very happy to eat them when we got home.