As we all know, Once Upon A Time stories are packed full of Princesses dancing with Princes and living happily ever! This week, we wanted to know how this influences the children ideas, so we asked them to share their thoughts about what Princesses are and, specifically, what they think Princesses wear and do.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, many said they wear dresses and tiaras and dance at fancy balls!

We decided to show the children some photos of real-life Princesses (i.e. Diana and the Duchess of Cambridge) to challenge their ideas about what Princesses look like and to introduce them to the idea that there is often a distinction between story-book characters and people in real-life.  We also wanted them to pick up on the idea that real-life Princesses do a lot of humanitarian work (when they are not busy dancing, of course!).  I’m not sure they were entirely convinced that these women, dressed in trousers and tracksuit bottoms, were Princesses!  But they were certainly intrigued by the idea, particularly by the photo of Princess Diana walking alongside the dangerous landmine signs.

We then read the story “Not All Princesses Dress in Pink” which encouraged the children to think about Princesses as children like them who can do anything they set out to do (e.g. build forts, play in the mud, etc.) – very much like the girls (and boys) in our class.

The children were quite inspired by this challenge to their assumptions and created their own fantastic word display in our outdoor classroom…

Speaking of our outdoor classroom, we immersed the children in our Cinderella theme this week, with several ‘invitations to play’ in our outdoor area:

We also found time to read the story of Prince Cinders, which is another Cinderella story, only this time with a male lead!  It is written by the wonderful author Babette Cole and is certainly worth a re-read if you come across it.

In our phonics lessons, we learnt the digraphs ‘ch’ and ‘sh’.  Here are the actions, mouth shapes and picture prompts.

 

Our star of the week did a fantastic job of filling her number bag up with all things to do with the number 13.

And our new number of the week has been chosen as number:

Finallly, we just wanted to say a huge thank you to all our wonderful parents and carers for your extra support this week when we had our special visitors in school.  Your kinds words and encouragement meant an awful lot, thank you!