As you may remember, last week, we received a parcel of magic beans along with a letter from a giant.  As the children were most insistent that the letter must have come from a friendly giant, our spotlight stories this week featured giant’s who are particularly kind and friendly.

First, we read the story of The Giant’s Stew.  This story has a surprising twist as, at first, we are led to believe that this giant is more of an ogre and wants to eat the forest animals in his stew.  But, at the end of the story, we realise that the giant is a vegetarian and simply wants to share his stew with his forest friends.  This story helped us to remember that we must give everyone a chance and not judge anyone by the way they look – we are all different and all special in different ways.  You can revisit the story here:

Next, we read another Julia Donaldson favourite: The Smartest Giant in Town, which you can revisit here.  We all agreed that George the Giant is a very kind and friendly person.

As we got to the end of the story, we discovered another letter had been left for us in the back of the book!  It was from the giant once again – this time, he was looking for a new pair of sandals and wondered if we might have any suitable ones in our new shoe shop.  Unfortunately, we didn’t think we had a pair large enough in stock so, instead, several of us quickly set to work drawing, designing and creating a pair that would be big enough for a giant.  Well done Reception, you are so kind and friendly!

In other news, we are so excited to announce that our beans have started to grow!

And in our phonics lessons, we have been being learning three new sounds: d, t and i.  Please do keep practising all six of the sounds we have learnt to date…thank you!

The picture prompts this week are “d-d-dinosaur”, “t-t-tower” and “i-i-insect”.

Don’t forget to check that you are saying the sounds correctly:

Or say the sounds together in the mirror, checking that your mouth shapes are correct.