Children's Laureate

I was glad to read the news that Julia Donaldson is the new children's laureate. Her books are extremely popular in several of the classes at school. With the younger children we read The Gruffalo over several weeks using the soft toys that accompany the book. To make the Gruffalo we drew a large version on sugar paper and used collage to add his hair (curled paper) and made his claws, teeth, wart, purple prickles and knobbly knees. They 'body parts' were laminated and had velcro on the back so the children could take them on and off.

By coincidence I read The Smartest Giant in Town with one of the older groups today. We read it as a sensory story. Once child was the Giant and the others were the animals he meets. Props we used were:
The Clothes Shop - A board (on casters) with a clothes shop sign and the items of clothing (trousers, shirt, tie, belt, socks, shoes)hung up on coat hangers (later in the story we added a 'closed' sign).
George the Giant -  wore a ragged gown and had a pair of big heavy sandals.
The Giraffe - wore a card headband with giraffe spot and ears and the symbol for giraffe on it. He also had a giraffe puppet to wrap the tie around.
The Goat - wore a headband with goat ears and horns as well as the symbol for goat. For the boat we used a physio step turned upside down with a pole for a mask. We then tied the shirt onto the mask.
The Mouse - wore a headband with mouse ears and mouse symbol. They had a mouse hand puppet to place into the shoe.
The Fox - wore a head band (see above) plus had a toy fox/puppet to put into the sock, and a pop-up tent.
The Dog - Wore a headband as above (they can walk over a brown blanket for the bog)

We told the story and dressed the giant in his robe and sandals. When he got to the clothes shop the children chose which clothes to put on him (using symbols) and we 'threw away' the gown and sandals in a black sack. When the giant was dressed we continued with the story. As each animal appeared a child dressed up as that animal (had a good look in teh mirror!) and was given the relevant piece of clothing from the giant. Switches can be used to say 'Thank you' and 'I am the smartest giant in town'. Each time the giant sings his song we focussed on the sequence, pointing to each child/animal in turn. At the end of the story we found the black bag and pulled out the gown and sandals. Finally we had a big wrapped box with a crown and card inside for the giant to wear. We ended the story by listening to the song on CD, again focussing on the sequencing.

The children really enjoyed this and we will be expanding on it by revisitng the sequence and creating simple three word sentences (who is doing what)