Preparing Mother's Day (1st May 2011)

Guess how much I love you, by Sam McBratney is the lovely story of Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare competing to find out who loves the other more. What my pupils eventually found out is that sometimes, when you love someone very, very much, it might be difficult to find a way to describe how great your feelings are. Love is far from being an easy thing to measure!

As a follow-up activity, my pupils made cards for their mothers. On the cover, they pasted an origami tulip and decorated it as they wished. Inside, they wrote, as message, the final words of the story "I love you right up to the moon and back"

Rosie's Walk - another hen's story

For those who enjoyed "The Mysterious eggs", here's another hen's funny animated story

Happy Easter!

The Mysterious Eggs, by Luísa Ducla Soares

A delightful story, by a talented portuguese writer, which I read with my 3rd and 4th grade pupils in order to introduce the Easter festivity.
Poor Mrs Hen! She has already laid a thousand eggs and all of them were taken away from her... until the day she decides to run away to a nearby wood. There, she makes a cozy nest for the egg she lays, but what a surprise when she comes back from her walk for food - she finds not 1, but 5 colourful eggs! What an unusual family she eventually gets!But no matter how "different" her children are - a crocodile, a parrot, a snake, an ostrich and a chick -, she loves them all equally!


Have a look at the "mysterious Easter eggs" which my pupils produced as an arts and crafts follow-up activity...

Another story about "strange"eggs... Meg's eggs is one of several titles in the Meg and Mog series about a witch (Meg) and her cat (Mog). In this story another of Meg's spells goes wrong when the eggs she's cooking for supper hatch out as... dinosaurs! As a follow-up activity, besides the "eggs" topic, perfect for Easter time, you can also get your students to discover more about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. There's a great animated cartoon for kids dealing this topic on Panda Channel "The Dinosaurs train". Have a look at the trailer on this link link

Knock Knock Who's there?

Knock Knock Who's there? A big, furry gorilla, a wicked old witch, a creepy ghost, a fierce scaly dragon and the world tallest giant... Who will be next to knock at the bedroom door of this scared little girl? A great story by an award winning author of child literature, which my 3rd grade pupils loved!
It's a great story for presenting or revising vocabulary related to feelings. The story is structured around the question "knock knock who's there" as well as the girl's reply "Then I won't let you in", which provides opportunity for repetition and allows children to join in spontaneously during the storytelling. The "clues" left in the illustrations allow the children to predict what scary "visitor" is coming next.
Following the reading and the work on the story, my pupils were introduced to more "fantastic creatures", from mythology as we observed and commented on José Jorge Letria's book, "Os animais fantásticos". The children were ecstatic!
Have a look at the work they produced...
link