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:
Next, we read the story ‘Mermaid’ by ex-CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell which you can reread here:
Story Time Read Aloud With Funny Twins Plus One
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:
Finally, we read the story ‘Can you catch a Mermaid?’ by Jane Ray:
TVatBIPS
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!