Adventures in Narnia

Took the book with us in the car today on the way up to Dartmoor, and read two chapters on the way there, then another one on the way back. Huge commitment on my part as this made me feel awful, but the children all wanted me to read it, and they were a captive audience, for once, so it was a worthwhile thing to do. Audiobooks of the next few stories are a very attractive prospect, I must say!

Josiah has watched the animated video of LWW a couple of times recently, and he seemed most surprised to hear the same story from the book as in the video, it was quite funny

Chapter Five - Back on this side of the door

Vocab words:
• snigger
• row (as in an argument)
• disposal

I love this chapter - the Professor just turns the children’s world upside down, it’s great I asked the children the ‘critical thinking’ question from the study guide: why do you think C S Lewis keeps repeating that you should never shut yourself in the wardrobe? They looked at me as if I were completely dense, and said ‘doh, because you might not be able to get out’. Which left me wondering if there was some deeper significance

Chapter Six - Into the Forest

Vocab words:
• camphor
• fraternise
• prig
• chatelaine

Forgot the dictionary so had to bluff ‘chatelaine’, I couldn’t manage to define it particularly accurately . Keep meaning to buy some mothballs so that the kids know what they smell like, but probably won’t get round to it, knowing me!

Activities from the study guide included a field trip to go ‘birding’, so we decided to look out for birds while on Dartmoor. Most of them had more sense than us, and weren’t up there. Another suggestion was to make bird feed things for the garden; we usually have bird feeders up over the winter so can tick that one. The critical thinking question for this chapter was about how the Witch found out that Mr Tumnus had let Lucy go, and about whether it would be safe to judge another world by what is normal in our world. Both seemed relatively easy to answer questions, in fact, not much critical thinking required, but there we go!

Chapter Seven - A Day with the Beavers

Vocab words:
• gumboots
• oilcloth
• festoon

Planning to have trout & potatoes for dinner tomorrow, and a Mrs Beaver special Marmalade Roll for dessert. Hopefully the children won’t like it