This week, we have immersed ourselves in the magical world of mermaids! First, we read an old favourite; The Singing Mermaid, by Julia Donaldson, which you can revisit here:

This Little Piggy

Next, we read the story ‘Mermaid’ by ex-CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell which you can reread here:

You can also listen to Cerrie Burnell talk about her mermaid book, along with several other of her recommendations for books about kindness and empathy here:

https://www.booktrust.org.uk/news-and-features/features/2020/february/cerrie-burnells-top-books-for-kindness-and-empathy/

Finally, we read the story ‘Can you catch a Mermaid?’ by Jane Ray:

This one was by far our favourite of the three and I was so impressed by how captivated the children were by the ideas within this story. It was also the longest of the three stories and their engagement in it, along with their understanding of the concepts, showed me just how ready the children are for Year 1!

The following day, after we had read the story, I made a rather startling discovery in the water tray when I arrived at school in the morning. A plastic bottle had been left there with what appeared to be a scrunched up piece of paper inside. “It’s a message in a bottle!” several of the children cried and, indeed, that’s exactly what it was. “Pirates use messages in bottles because they don’t have postboxes” and “they put the paper in a bottle so it doesn’t break in the water and the bottle floats”.

We carefully pulled the message out of the bottle and here is what it said:

We were all very concerned about Freya and many of us set to work writing messages to the pirates to give the mermaid back! We found several bottles and put our messages in them and then left the bottles in the water tray over night. The following morning, they had disappeared and in their place was another bottle with another message:

After much discussion (including suggestions to build a submarine, drill a hole into the bottom of the pirate ship to sneak on board at night and leave chocolate coins instead of real gold coins!), we have decided we will hunt for treasure next week and hopefully manage to find 100 coins to give to the pirates. Watch this space to find out what happens next!

Towards the end of the school year, each class at St. Matthew’s shares their learning from across the year by putting together a class assembly. The whole school is invited to watch the assembly along with the parents and carers from that class.

Our class assembly took place on Friday 17th June and we could not have been prouder of the children. They pulled off a really wonderful assembly! Each and every child took their turn to stand up and say their line in front of the audience, showing just how brave they are, and remembered to use big, but not shouting, voices. Parents, thank you so much for preparing the children at home and for helping them to learn their lines.

And thank you for coming along on the day to support us – we absolutely loved sharing all of our learning with you – and here are the reviews you gave us, apparently!

After the excitement of our class assembly, we returned to our learning in the classroom and have been busy reading some wonderful Spotlight Stories.

In our Picture News lesson, we learnt about the search engine ‘Google’ and how it can be used to help us find pictures on the internet. We found out that not everybody feels represented by the pictures that appear in Google searches and that the company wants to make some changes to make sure everyone feels included.

We talked about what it means to be included, how it feels to be left out and the sort of words we can use everyday to make sure everyone feels included.

We read the story ‘My World, Your World’ by Melanie Walsh to help us understand that even though we do not all look the same, we can always find things that we have in common.

On Wednesday 22nd June, it was Windrush Day and we learnt about Dame Floella Benjamin who was not treated very nicely, and did not feel included, because of the colour of her skin when she moved to England in 1960. We listened to this CBeebies Bedtime Story to find out more about her early life:

We also returned to our Splish, Splash, Splosh topic, reading the delightful story of ‘Wee Granny and The Magic Bag and The Pirates” by Elizabeth McKay and Maria Bogade. The only video I could find of this story was on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=603739453564477) – so, my apologies to anyone not on Facebook! I actually borrowed this book from Raynes Park library, and will return it shortly, so do go and borrow it if your child particularly enjoyed it!

In the story, Wee Granny has a magical tartan bag that solves each and every problem they encounter. When they miss the ferry, Wee Granny pulls a rowing boat out of her tartan bag and when they meet some pirates searching for their buried treasure, she produces a metal detector from the depths of her bag!

I brought in an old tartan bag to show the children, so they could better understand what tartan looks like. As the bag is so old, I hadn’t looked inside it for several years and half expected to find an old train ticket or two or perhaps a bit of change. But, instead, I reached deep down inside and pulled out an adult-sized metal detector! We couldn’t believe our eyes or work out how the metal detector could have been inside the bag! The only explanation we could come up with was that this bag must be magic too! The magic didn’t stop there: next I pulled out a pirate treasure chest, filled with treasure and pirate clothes, and a pirate ship complete with steering wheel and pirate flag! Ever since then, the classroom has been overrun with pirates; sailing the high seas and searching for treasure. Let’s hope they are friendly pirates!

We hope everyone is having a lovely weekend, see you on Monday!