Learning Parade

Rainy Day Reads

As part of our whole school art project, Take One Picture 2009, we investigated the topic rain after discussing The Umbrellas by Renoir. These picture books from our local library proved really popular:

We splashed about in puddles with our wellies on, then headed inside for creative responses!

We created paintings and collages of the puddles we saw and photographed in the playground.

We drew around our legs while wearing our wellies!

Then we put all our work together to create a large collaborative rainy day display. 

Phew! We love it when picture books keep us busy!

Anthony Browne: New UK Children's Laureate

Anthony Browne has always been one of my favourite children's writer - illustrators.

This month it was announced that he is our sixth children's laureate and as a teacher and fan I'm so excited! Anthony will use his new title to promote the importance of picture books...

"Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book."

The visual imagery in Anthony's work reveals the depths to be explored in this form of literature. We recently read My Dad on Father's Day and my daughter commented on the sunshines she could see throughout the book. We talked about how important the sun is... how it keeps us warm and helps us see the world around us clearly. Just like Daddy.

(Her next drawing of Scott had an image of the sun hidden in it somewhere :) )  

The Big Picture nationwide campaign to put picture books in the public eye is supported by Anthony Brown. You can follow the link on my blog to find out more!

The Gruffalo

I was delighted to discover today that Julia Donaldson's classic Gruffalo is to be made into an animated feature, to be aired on UK screens at Christmas! 

This wonderful picture book is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2009. To listen to the birthday song composed by Julia (WIP) and to find out more about how the illustrator created the 'child friendly' monster, follow these links to recent articles from The Guardian:

Julia Donaldson talks about her monster creation

Axel Scheffler opens his sketchpad

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 

This classic picture book is always a wonderful story to read during the summer months! The learning possibilities are endless and we never tire of revisiting these pages!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is actually celebrating its 40th year in publication and there are lots of toys and games circulating at present to help bring the story to life. You can visit the author's website (I've posted a link opposite) and watch him at work while he creates amazing collages for his books. My class watched the video of Eric demonstrating step by step how he achieved the look of his caterpillar illustrations in his own home studio. They then borrowed his technique!  

 

Aren't these fabulous?

Children can retell the story in sequence using the fabulous story props available at Kiz Club

or why not use their black and white images to create mini books? My class made mini caterpillar books and pasted the food images along the pages in alphabetical order.

If you are into first hand experiences as much as we are, you can find miniature butterfly farms at this site, a store that also has a special 40th anniversary butterfly bundle on sale! Insect Lore Store

We recorded our learning of the life cycle of a butterfly on paper plates as shown below:

I also threw together some interactive resources for our SMARTboard to help the children revise the days of the week, data handling, reading non-fiction for a purpose etc. I put some song words on there too.... there are so many brilliant songs to be found online about caterpillars!