On Monday morning, the children discovered something rather strange in the classroom;  Mr Gumpy had been to visit over the weekend and had left his boat behind!  It was moored at the dock, but neither Mr Gumpy nor any of the other characters from the story were anywhere to be seen!  Without them, how could the story possibly come to life?

Fortunately, on a table nearby, the children discovered a rather exciting invitation to play; mask-making resources for all the different characters in the story.  They quickly set to work, carefully choosing a character, using the scissors independently to cut out their masks (we were so impressed!), asking for help when necessary and especially when it came to cutting out the eyes and, finally, attaching a lolly stick with masking tape.

Before long, Mr Gumpy’s boat was once again teeming with all the animals and children from the story and, just like the story, we all agreed, he needed a much bigger boat!  After much splishing and splashing, the boat began to look at little worse for wear but, luckily, Mrs Morris found a large cardboard box in the shed to replace it.  Hopefully, Mr Gumpy won’t notice the difference when he comes back to collect his boat!

Next, we carried on with our Splish, Splash, Splosh topic by reading another story about some animals who end up getting rather wet.  This time we read the story of Mrs Wishy-Washy’s Farm.

You can re-read the story here; do remember to turn the sound off and read the story aloud to your child yourself…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cizS3vyV8ks

Later in the week, I had to pop out of the classroom for a moment and, according to the children, Mrs Wishy-Washy herself arrived as soon as I left, sat on my chair and read them all a story!  She had already gone by the time I came back but, as I’m told, she was rather bossy and very cross.  I wonder if any of the children can remember why she was so cross?

You can find out more about Mrs Wishy-Washy and what made her cross here:

We had lots of fun, retelling the stories of Mrs Wishy-Washy and, of course, she made a few more appearances as the week went on 😉.  Thank you to Miss Leutchford for letting us borrow her gorgeous puppet theatre to help us with our acting.

Our final visitor of the week was a rather special one.  It was completely unrelated to our topic and entirely child-initiated and planned!  Last week, one of the children and I happened to be talking about tortoises as pets and I mentioned that Mrs Shaffer (our Nursery helper every Friday) has a pet tortoise.  This child came up with the rather wonderful idea to ask Mrs Shaffer if she might be able to bring her tortoise in to meet us.

After remembering to ask Mrs Shaffer herself, entirely unprompted by me, the visit was agreed and this Friday, we were indeed visited by 52-year-old Herbert, the tortoise!  The children were so keen to meet him that they took it upon themselves to sit down around the edge of the carpet, without any instructions at all from us!!

Mrs Shaffer had brought juicy nectarines and strawberries for the children to feed Herbert, as these are his favourite foods but, he was so much at home in Nursery, that he ignored his food and spent a good half hour roaming around the carpet.  Miss Manhire got quite the shock when she popped in looking for props for the Year 6 production!

When I asked the child, who had initiated and organised the visit, how the experience had been, she smiled broadly and replied ‘great’!

A huge thank you to Mrs Shaffer for bringing Herbert in to meet us and for all the amazing help she gives us each week – we don’t quite know what we would do without her on a Friday!