We started by watching three things that we had recorded from the night before that were part of the Stephen Fry weekend. We watched Stephen Fry: 50 Not Out last night, then watched an episode of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, The Young Ones, and Blackadder Goes Forth. These three cover social studies, and history.
Then we watching two episodes from some time ago from Channel 4 about finding and keeping Au Pairs. This too would cover social studies, as well as psychology.
Then we started a drama about Turing and the Codebreakers but Ram didn't find that one interesting so we left it. We then went on to watching Shopping for England which was from the Edwardian series on BBC 4 from a few months ago. This was about the rise of the department store in England, especially Selfridge's, and the parallel rise of the middle classes. Definitely historical that one!
After that we went back to ancient history and watching Gladiator's Graveyard which was about how archaeology has explained the life of gladiators. By then it was time for the film Meteor which tied in nicely with The Science of Discworld. We had been reading only that morning about the K/T boundary and how a meteor may or may not have contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs, and it was interesting to see how a meteor might impact upon Earth today.
There was also some historical value in this film as it takes place during the Cold War era. In fact it is strange to think back to my childhood and remember how it was affected by the Cold War, and see the parallels today with the effect that climate change is having on people.
We then went back to recorded material and watched Silent Britain, which was about silent films in the UK which are often over looked by the American giants such as Chaplin and so on.
During this time I knew that I needed to stay close to Ram. He was very quiet and subdued. I decided to try out making Celtic Knotwork designs from a website recommended by someone on the He-special email list. But at one point even though Ram was sitting beside me, he felt that I still wasn't giving him enough attention. He was jealous of a Celtic knot!
Every time I tried to start drawing he would nudge my arm, so I put my work down for a while and he climbed on my knee and we carried on watching TV. After a while he seemed satisfied and he went off into his 'dog kennel' to watch TV and I went back to drawing knots.
Ram wasn't totally idle himself all day. He did spent some time making a Lego model based on a model of a dinosaur that he had.
(ignore the date on the photo. We have a camera that is living in the past!)
We ended the day by watching the second part of an interview with Stephan Fry, before going to bed and reading more of The Science of Discworld.
You would think that a whole day sitting watching TV would mean that without the exercise that everyone says children need, Ram would find it hard to go to sleep. But it is the opposite! He went to sleep quite easily this evening!
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