To prepare for World Book Day this year each class got creative! All the children designed and made a hat linked to the book they are currently reading as a class:
Wrens - 'The Cornish Pasty Pirates' by Sarah Hewitt
Doves - 'The Mousehole Cat' by Antonia Barber
Puffins - 'Ish' by Peter H Reynolds
Buzzards - 'The Explorer' by Katherine Rundell.
There were lots of different and amazing ideas linked to each book, showing the children's favourite parts of the books so far or what they thought was important in the story. The adults got involved as well and made their own hats too!
We all dressed up in our hats for the day! Some children also came to school dressed as a book character. There was a huge wow as everyone saw the hats that others had made.
During the day, we explored the reading and book related workshops in mixed age groups from Reception to Year 6. We took part in 5 amazing workshops during the day. The workshop leaders chose their favourite children's books for their workshop.
Mr Davies led a session about Treasure Island by RL Stevenson. Children discussed differences between islands and continents, as well as looking at compass points. They then created their own treasure map for Jim and Long John Silver to follow. Everyone made sure they included a range of physical features such as rivers, volcanoes and waterfalls.
Mrs Sissons led a creative writing workshop. She shared some of her favourite poetry books from her childhood from the 'Flower Fairies' collections by Cicely Mary Barker. She talked about the beautiful illustrations and the poems before sharing two poems: 'Tulip' and 'Narcissus'.
We looked at some tulips and daffodils and worked with a partner to respond with some rich vocabulary to describe the spring flowers. We then used these ideas and other ideas that we thought of to describe the flowers. Some of us developed our ideas into poems.
At the end of the workshop, we had the opportunity to perform our poems and descriptive writing with the group. The children really enjoyed reading their poems.
In Mrs. Palfrey's workshop we read 'Ish' by Peter H Reynolds. 'Ish' is the story of a boy called Ramon who loves to draw, until one day his older brother laughs at one of his pictures and destroys both his confidence and the joy he finds in his art.
Every picture he draws afterwards ends up crumpled on the floor or in the bin. Until his sister uncrumples his work and together they realise how amazing his art work is and it doesn't have to look exactly like what it is meant to be.
We had great fun crumpling up a piece of paper, stamping on it and sitting on it! Then using watercolours, we added paint to the crumpled paper. We then carefully unfolded the paper and looked carefully to see what we could see in our painting.
Some children saw a forest, beach, volcano, flowers, leaves. We let our imaginations run wild and our painting didn't need to be perfect!
In Mrs Noblett's workshop for World Book Day, the children listened to some extracts from The BFG by Roald Dahl. They heard about how the BFG mixed his dreams and then discussed what they would like to dream about. The children then thought about the ingredients they would need to make their dreams before drawing and labelling their dreams in their own dream jar. Some children also had a go at writing instructions about how they would mix their dreams. We had dreams about going back in time to the Jurasic times with the dinosaurs and being in a dream where it rained chaocolate and sweets!
The final workshop was led by Miss Thomas. She shared one of her favourite stories from when she was a child 'Winnie the Pooh' by A.A. Milne.
We explored the different personalities of each character and how they cared for each other, especially Eeyore.
After that, we talked about how we could help a friend if they were feeling sad or lonely and we made beautiful 'Kindness' posters.
Miss Thomas is so proud to see the children at Pensilva Primary School are all thoughtful, caring and kind.
At the end of the afternoon, Mrs Sissons held a special celebration assembly. The children all paraded in their hats and some examples from each workshop were shown. The children were enthusiastically talking about everything they had enjoyed during the day.
Favourite Book Hat Competition
To keep the enthusiasm and book talk going Mrs Sissons has launched a whole school competition to design and make a hat of your favourite book. Please get involved talking about your favourite children's books and authors and share in some creative making of a hat or hats with your child. Hats can be any shape or size and decorated in any way (paint, collage, felt-tips etc) to represent a favourite and loved children's story.
Hat entries need to be in school by Monday 27th March for the judging. There will be a prize for the most interesting favourite book (s) hat in each class! We can't wait to see your designs.