The Whole Wide World Fits in My Head

It really does! Check out the amazing work done by Fourth Class as part of this project with illustrator Tarsila Kruse and yours truly.

Well done, team!

Picture this!

We had a brilliant time in First Class flexing our narrative muscles before the Easter break. We looked at ways to find ideas for new stories and got a lot of help from paintings by Mary Swanzy, Hokusai and others.

We asked lots of questions about each image, wondering what was going on, who were the people in the pictures, what they were doing, what they were saying, feeling, what happened just before, what might happen next and so on. That got us (sneakily) thinking about character, plot, setting and all the things you need to build a story. 

As for the answers to these questions… we made them up, using clues from the paintings, so that they were all right!

Then we put everything together in order and created a collective story with a little help from Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles. Who lives there? Where are they now? Will they come back? Why is it all green behind the window? Is the house in a cornfield or a jungle? Or is it that the house is tiny and it's only normal grass growing outside?... 

Here is our story, enjoy! (By the way, First Class, we're going to need a title!)

Two magic people lived in a tiny house. Their job was to get rid of human people’s rubbish. 

But one day, they got rubbish that was really dangerous to both humans and fairies: a jar of killer bugs! 

So they went off to get rid of it as far away from everyone as they could. But outside in the tall grass they were attacked by a giant poisonous snake that swallowed them up!

Inside the snake’s tummy, they opened up the jar. The killer bugs started eating the snake from the inside out. The snake died and the bugs too (because of the poison in the snake’s blood). 

They climbed out of the snake and went home, determined to have a word with the humans about producing such dangerous rubbish in the first place…

Everyone got to write their own picture-inspired story after that, and to work on the tricky issue of structure or story map. That's how we realised that some plans are better than others, with some being too boring, too simple, too complicated or too what-just-happened-? Finding the right balance is really hard, but this lot really gave it their best and did a great job!

I can't wait to see their finished pieces after the break!

World Book Day 2019

It was all go last week for World Book Day in SMGS!
With trips to the library, chats with publishers, bookmark design sessions and lots more, everyone celebrated reading for pleasure with gusto.
Inspired by last year's success, every class turned their room door into a work of bookish art once more.
See how many favourites you can recognise and check out Room 12's nod to their very own book, Green Giraffes and Pink Elephants!

Building it up

Today, we read about the Tiny King who is a bit lost in his great big castle, protected by his great big soldiers and eating great big dinners all on his own. We related to some of his predicaments, but we also noticed that we were somewhat luckier than him: we at least have teddies to keep us company in our big beds! 
As we looked through Taro Miura's colourful pictures we played a bit of spotting and counting and looking for our favourite things to eat. This week again, lots of conversations got started thanks to a book...
Then we moved from the 2D world of the page to the 3D world of building blocks. Inspired by the geometrical shapes of the Tiny King's castle, we built our own towers, houses and even slides! Fine motor skills, balancing, estimating, shape recognition, all came into play without anyone noticing. The best kind of learning!
As promised, the links to the songs and videos!

Suzi Shelton - Tomboy In A Princess Dress:

Bounce Patrol: Royal Finger Family Song:

Brunswick Project: King of the Castle (with goats!): 

Chapi Chapo: Le Cube Espiègle, a (psychedelic!) wordless French cartoon from the 80s full of squares and shapes like The Tiny King: 

Putting our Stamp on Things

Baby Book Clubbers had great fun this morning following the adventures of Zebedee who looks high and low for his round, red balloon and makes plenty of new friends along the way.
We were really taken by the pictures and their stark contrast of black and white and red, and we had all sorts of conversations about the taste of strawberries and our favourite colours.
To flex our muscles (both physical and creative) we then moved on to stamping and populated our blanc and white forests with colourful friends for Zebedee. Mainly dinosaurs, but really friendly ones!
As promised, here are the links to the songs and videos. Enjoy!

It Only Takes One Night to Make a Balloon Your Friend by Lunch Money 

Steve Lee - Grab A Balloon - Miller Made Music Showcase

Colorful Time-Lapse of Hot Air Balloons in New Mexico | Short Film Showcase