Project 82: Football!

Solomon had suggested 'football' as a project as we were scooting past the park one day, and we saved it for this week to include a bit of family rivalry: Peterborough United (the local team) were at home to Sunderland AFC (their mum's team).

Peterborough v. Sunderland

Although we'll have the occasional kick-about, and might watch a match on the TV, it's not particularly a big part of our family culture, so it made a nice change to go to a match: Solomon enjoyed it, and avidly watched the game; Monica watched the crowd, and then read a book for the second half. It was a good game with a noisy atmosphere thanks to the large number of raucous travelling supporters - one ran on the pitch and another set off a flare, which provided a nice introduction to a couple of videos on crowd psychology later in the week.

We also bought FIFA 19 for the Switch, and for a couple of days it even managed to overtake Fortnite as the most popular game in the house, as Solomon explored the various clubs and player skills.

The children used templates from Twinkl to design their own football kits:

Football Kits - as sponsored by Domino's and LNER!

And explored one of the more famous footballing pictures, L.S. Lowry's Going to the Match. Firstly using a Twinkl template to describe what they saw 'Inside the painting', and then drawing some of their own matchstick men:

Matchstick Men

Next week's project: Music

Project 7: Sunderland and the North-East

The 'Sunderland and the North-East' project spanned two weeks as it incorporated a five day trip to Sunderland to visit Solomon's grandparents.The project involved visiting multiple local attractions, and then creating a 'Visit the North-East' tourism poster.

We visited Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books in Ouseburn, Newcastle. There are seven floors of interactive activities relating to children's books, with a special exhibition on comic books when we went. There's plenty to fill a whole day, and really engaging staff who are great with children. Solomon was particularly taken by the Attic floor at the top, generally used for storytime but with lots of dressing up boxes scattered around.

The "Can't You Sleep, Little Bear" bear cave

We visited Hylton Castle in Sunderland, the gatehouse-tower of a castle. An impressive building from the 14th century, although unfortunately the castle was fenced off as part of its ongoing refurbishment. There was, however, a really good park next to the castle.

Hylton Castle

We also visited Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, and Sunderland's illuminations which are on each October.

Cheshire Cat at Sunderland's illuminations

We also watched a number of videos about Sunderland's coal mining, ship building and glass making heritage.

Finally, Solomon brought together some of the different features of the North East into a 'Visit the North East' poster.

'Visit The North East'

The poster incorporates the Angel of the North, a car (representing the Nissan car factory), Hylton Castle, a toadstool from the Alice in Wonderland part of the Sunderland illuminations, a glass vase and a ship to represent Sunderland's shipbuilding and glass making heritage.

Next week's project: Space and the Planets!