Victorian Children and Chicken Trees

Today our equipment arrived from Sainsburys, courtesy of their Active Kids scheme. I'm praying for sunny weather tomorrow so that we can christen it all at the park.

This morning I told the boys to choose an hour of tv based learning for the day, and they both agreed on watching Primary History on Class TV (CBBC). The programmes covered Victorian Children at Work, at School, and at Play.

Joshua and Samuel then each followed this up with the Learning Section, then the Games, on the accompanying website, and Joshua also did one of the worksheets.

William enjoyed several of the activities from the Disney Educators site, particularly the capital letter matching one. I was impressed with how many capitals he recognised, but it was interesting that he picked up the "extra" lines and squiggles of the font face as being "not right".

Even more interesting (and often amusing!) was how well he did at recognising the sounds. So I'd say "o is for orange" and he'd then come up with two or three others. Such an insight into his world - i is for ice cream (of course), w is for worm and wobbily, b is for "ben's clock" - in otherwords Big Ben (where did he learn THAT from?!), most heart warming, g is for God, and m was for marvellous mummy!

On an intellectual note, it was interesting to realise the sounds that he doesn't hear correctly - for example t was for cheese.

Talking of William, I must share his latest obsession. We've been discussing things that grow, and we've looked into plants, vegetables etc over the growing season as a result of growing our own veg.

Two days ago at dinner - having chicken - he announced "I want to grow my own chicken, you know, like this dead one on my plate". He got down after dinner and went into the garden where he found a green tomato that had fallen off the tomato plant and proceeded, very carefully, to plant it 2 inches deep in some carefully prepared soil. He has watered it (every couple of hours...) since, and takes everyone who comes to the house down the garden to see his "chicken tree".

When someone questionned whether you can in fact grow chickens on trees as they are "birds not fruit" he patiently explained (as only a 4 yo can to a "slow" adult) that "the chickens are alive until you pick them, then they are dead and you can eat them".

He is so desperate convinced that he will get a chicken, but also is consumed with when he will actually see a sprouting plant and "a flower so the bees can get pollen stuff".

Any ideas what I can plant when he is not looking, that will grow into something interesting (quickly!) and take his mind off of the chicken?