The Big Lad came home from school last week with a piece of paper that outlined his next project - build a model house using junk and recycled materials.
Of course, he couldn’t just go and stick a few cardboard boxes together and call it a house.
No, the Big Lad had to build a model of “his” croft - with Mummy and Pa helping, of course.
Fortunately, we had the end cap of the box the Kangaroo bike had come in, so this was to become the base for the Big Lad’s model.
We then had a chat about building to scale - in his words, “take something big, measure it, and then shrink it so it’s exactly the same but very small”.
So, not only were we building a model of the croft, but we were going to build it to scale (1-100 scale to be precise, 1cm equalling 1 metre).
That meant spending a good part of the weekend accompanying the Big Lad as he measured the croft with a measuring wheel and tape measure.
He measured the length of the buildings, their width, the spaces between them, the distance along the road boundaries, where the windows and doors were, and where the dykes were.
The Other Half and I measured the taller sections while he supervised and made notes on his plan, which he’d sketched himself.
With everything measured and noted, my old skills as a model maker were turned to good use as the Big Lad and I made dozens of scale parts for his model.
I’d show him how to do it once, then guide him through it a couple of times (he has a tendency to rush ahead) and then let him get on with it himself.
After a lot of measuring, drawing, cutting, taping, gluing, colouring and writing, we were on the final stretch this evening when we suddenly realised we hadn’t been documenting the process.
Fortunately, there was still a lot to do, so the Big Lad pressed on with the work while the OH brought the camera out.
The Big Lad attaches pieces of tape to the gables, ready to attach the roof.
Attaching the roof was fiddly and the Big Lad needed a little help, but he got there in the end.
The Big Lad holds a piece of heavy card against the gable wall so he can mark the cutout that will turn the card into a chimney that slots onto the roof.
Two pairs of hands were needed to cut the V-shaped slot out of the chimney without cutting the card in half.
Guess who had the sticky job of holding the chimney while the glue was spread over its base?
The second chimney is stuck to the roof. The Big Lad’s sketch of the house can be seen to the right.
“This is a scale-model of my house. I’m taking it into class tomorrow.”
A close-up of the main house, showing the sun-porch, the solar panel (the black rectangle), all the doors and windows, the road sign pointing to Wardhouse, and even a neighbour driving past!
A view from the back of the house, with the steading buildings plus the kitchen extension and raised roof on the main house. The garden beds are to the right and another neighbour is driving past to the left.
The Other Half and I think the Big Lad did a brilliant job, and I’m looking forward to taking it into school for him tomorrow morning.
As well as helping the Big Lad, doing the chores, moving logs, seeing to a sick pig (she’d eaten a dead crow), clearing away felled trees and more, I had my own assembly job to do - the Kangaroo Bike.
The process is all photographed and waiting to be posted on the blog, but I’ve run out of time again!
Hopefully tomorrow…
Tell him that it’s fantastic. I want to make one now!
Well done Fionn! It is a lot of fun doing something like this; making things of any sort is very satisfying as you see it happening under your fingers and with your parents helping on the hard (or sticky) bits.
Poppy (in Australia)
Awesome Big Lad! Can we come live in it?
Very impressive.
Of course, it’ll just be a levelled piece of work assessed against the criteria established by the national curriculum, against his age and experience, taking into account any parental help and appreciating any attempt at scale and the reuse of resources available.
It should just be a damn good model, made by someone who worked hard and enjoyed what they were doing.
Amazing work, can see he takes after his old man in the modelling stakes, brings back some memories of being an assistant in the creative process.
That’s fantastic!! Your young man never ceases to amaze me with his abilities - far and above those of most children of his age.
Well done to the Big Lad!
I’m firmly of the view that it’s not that the Big Lad is in someway innately better than his peers.
Rather, we put it down to him having the encouragement, support and approval needed to stretch himself, to tackle difficult tasks (and yes, learn that he can’t quite manage some of them yet), and to think outside the prescriptive “but he’s only six/seven/eight” box that many adults put children in.
For instance, we’ve just had a note home from school saying that he’s two years ahead of his peers in maths. (And yes, I know it’s meaningless target in many ways.)
The reason for the Big Lad’s maths skills is that we’ve spend a lot of time over the past few years doing all sorts of maths in a fun and non-intrusive way. Chicken eggs make great counters for a start (just counting to start, then addition and subtraction, now multiplication and division).
The Big Lad helps me measure up timber when I’m making things, he understands the basics of trigonometry and Pythagoras’s Theorem from helping me set out fences, he can work out fuel consumption and electricity consumption from watching and asking questions while I do the calculations, he understands scale from reading maps with me, and so on.
The Wee ‘Un is the same and I know from my spells supervising at playgroup that most of the other children can pick things up quickly if given the chance and encouragement. But I also know from playgroup that most parents and staff dumb down for the children.
Anyway, that’s my opinion.
Although I will admit it probably helps the Big Lad having such brainiac genes!!
I use the correct terminology for the things I teach in school, and the children learn it just as well. Why should I teach them a word, then another word when they are bigger, and another word after that, all for the same thing. Either it’s a homophone or it’s not, if you follow me. Children are not stupid, they just don’t know until they are told!