Spring 1 - Once Upon a Time
Once Upon a Time
This half term we are exploring different traditional tales.
Rationale: Richly written stories from high quality authors and illustrators will inspire the children to retell, recreate and act out their own versions of the stories. They will be introduced to story components and become familiar with story language and structure. They will learn new techniques to construct a variety of puppets and work collaboratively to perform puppet shows.
Hook: The children found a mysterious object and a box on the carpet after lunch that had a sign on it 'for Reception'. Inside the box was a bag of puppets and some story clues, including a bowl of porridge, a beanstalk, ginger and a rolling pin. The children excitedly guessed the stories. Then they pulled the material off the object to reveal a puppet theatre! There were lots of puppet shows during the afternoon and the children were able to explore the clues.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
We read the story and spoke about the different characters. Then we made stick puppets of the four main characters.
We used them to perform the story in our puppet theatre.
Goldilocks ate the bears' porridge! We talked about healthy breakfasts and explored bowls of porridge. We decided the thicker one was Daddy Bear's, the runny one was Mummy Bear's and Baby Bear's was just right. We liked getting our hands messy.
We also painted some bears and mixed the paints to make different shades of brown.
The Three Little Pigs
Before we read the story, we spoke about what we thought might happen. Then we read it and spoke about the story structure. Independently, we ordered pictures from the story.
We looked at different buildings around the world and talked about the materials they are made from. We decided that straw and sticks are not good building materials! We used a range of materials to build our own houses.
We have continued to perform puppet shows in our theatre and have started retelling familiar tales, for example The Gruffalo and The Wizard of Oz, as well as our invented ones.
We have also started to watch the shows on blankets with picnics.
We made folded paper puppets of the pigs and the wolf. We enjoyed being able to make them talk by opening and closing our hand.
One of our friends shared their special puppets from home with us. We liked looking at a different style of puppet. It was funny that the legs moved when you pulled the string!
