Puppet Shows

During Book Week we got into small groups and wrote our own puppet shows.  Today we presented our stories to our class.

This puppet show is about two monkeys who fought over the same lovely branch of the tree.

In the next puppet show three little ducks were forced to find a new home after a greedy fox moved in.

This group created a puppet show about a king who had a terrible nightmare.

This puppet show was about two bears were fighting in the forest

about something petty until a pretty parrot flew down to break it up.

This puppet show was about a royal family who were devastated

when one member was kidnapped.

One group presented a play that they made up about how they escaped from a house fire.

We enjoyed using our imaginations to create some fun stories to share with our classmates. 

Character Day

Today was Character Day at our school and everyone was encouraged to dress up as someone from a storybook.  We had lots of interesting looking characters at school and first thing we did this morning was to ask our friends who they had come dressed up as.

In our class we had a wide range of characters including...

 

Thumbellina, a fairytale character created by Hans Christian Anderson

 

Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean by Rob Kidd

 

Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

Alana from Alana, Dancing Star by Arlene Phillips

 

Charlie from I am not sleepy and I will not go to bed by Lauryn Child

 

Melody from Melody and the Enchanted Harp by Elise Allen

 

Peter from Peter and the Pigs by Simon Grant and Jenny Cooper

Casey from The Dead End by Mimi McCoy

 

Cinderella from one of the world's oldest folktales

 

Snow White from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

 

Pippi Longstocking from the book by the same name written by Astrid Lindgren

Here we have a two teacher-witches!  The first witch is from the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling and the second is from The Witches by Roald Dahl. 

The two best dressed characters were selected from each class to receive a special prize in our school Assembly.  SC and JC were the winners from our class.  Their costumes showed a high degree of creativity and showed that the children (and their parents) had closely studied their characters.  Well done to both of you!

 

Thank you to all our parents and caregivers who supported our Character Day by helping us to create such amazing costumes.  It was so fun to see all our friends enthusiastically sharing information about their favourite characters.  We are looking forward to Book Week next year when we can dress up all over again!

Books have birthdays too!

Books have birthdays!  Today our Maths assignment was to work out how old some of our books really are.

  

Inspired by Dr Ben Carson

Our teacher told us the story of Dr Ben Carson, a famous brain surgeon who lives in America. 

When he was a child, the same age as us, Ben lived with his mother and older brother.  They were very poor as his mother was illiterate.  Because she couldn't read or write very well, Ben's mother had to work as a cleaner for rich people.

At school Ben would always fail his tests.  He was the bottom of the class and the children called him dumb.  This made him feel like he didn't care about learning and sometimes he would get into fights with other children who hurt his feelings.  Ben became an angry boy.

Oneday Ben's mother saw his school report card and was disappointed that her boy was doing so badly at school.  She decided that her boy couldn't stay at the bottom of the class.  He was smart and she knew that he could be successful in anything he put his mind to.  In fact, Ben's mother believed that her sons could be more successful than the others. 

Ben's mother prayed and asked God to help her to find a way to help her sons at school.  He answered her prayer while she was working oneday.  Ben's mother noticed that the rich people she worked for had lots of books.  This made her realise that books were the key to success.  When she arrived home from work she told her boys that they were only allowed to watch two TV programmes a week and that they had to choose them in advance.  She aslo told them that they had to learn all of the times tables off by heart.  Finally they had to go to the Library and borrow two book every week, read them and then write a report for each book. 

Little by little the boys began filling their heads with ideas and information and when they did their tests at school their grades improved so much that Ben ended up being the top of the class instead of the bottom!

Here is Dr Carson's book which tells the story about his life:

Here are the main reasons why Ben's life changed:

1  Ben's mum stopped her boys watching TV.
2  Ben started reading books.
3  Ben learnt his times tables off by heart.
4  Ben's mum encouraged him to believe that he could be successful.

Librarians Come to Visit

Two lovely Librarians from the Panmure Library visited our school today dressed up as famous storybook characters!  Can you guess who they are?

Lucy told us a very funny story with puppets about a dog who was making all kinds of weird sounds.  Rather than making the sound of normal dog barking he started to baa like a sheep, cluck like a hen and purr like a kitten.  The vet discovered that the dog had been eating the other animals! 

Lucy also read us a book called Duck!  Rabbit!  It was an unusual book because some of us could see that the main character was a duck while others of us could see that it was definitely a rabbit.  What do you think it is?

We are very happy that the librarians came to visit us today to start of our Book Week celebrations.  It's wonderful to have friends like them in our community. 

Our Golden Boy!

Congratulations AD!

We are delighted that AD has succeeded in being one of the first five students in our school to earn a Gold Award in Mathletics!  This is an amazing achievement and reflects A's dedication to practicing mathematic skills at home.  A's certificate was presenting by Mr P in our school Assembly.

What a character!

At our last Assembly a storybook character turned up to speak to us.  See if you can figure out what story she is from.

Hello everyone.  I wonder if you have seen me before.  Do any of you know who I am?  No, I'm not Miss B!  I don't even know who she is but I'm sure she isn't this cuddly!

I will give you some clues about who I am.  I love knitting!  I love making scarves, especially black ones.  I give them away to my good friends like Richie and Dan.

I'm also pretty famous for my marmelade!  Sometimes my friend Richie brings his mates to my house to help me make a big batch of it. 

My favourite sport is rubgy and my favourite team are the All Blacks.  I'm pretty proud of them and I'm going to be supporting them during the World Cup next month!  Are you?  I've bought my banner already.  Have you got your supporter's gear yet?

Actually, I'm such a big All Blacks fan that the coach calls  me up to ask if I can help them with their training!  The ABs say that my marmelade helps them to win matches.  I'm hoping they win the one that matters!

Something pretty fabulous happened to me a few years back.  A lady called Helen McKinlay wrote a book about me and how I help the All Blacks!  A neat illustrator called Craig Smith did the pictures.  It is such a fun book.  You should ask your teacher to read it to you some time.

Now, do you know who I am?