Mrs Noah's Pockets

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Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor and Loki by Kevin Crossley-Holland, illustrated by Jeffrey Alan Love Comprehensive teachers’ notes designed to develop critical thinking skills and a more sophisticated, considered response to texts and illustrations. Education Shed Ltd, Severn House, Severn Bridge, Riverside North, Bewdley, Worcestershire, UK, DY12 1AB From Words & Pictures, a stylishly abridged The Wizard of Oz, adapted by Michel Laporte and illustrated by Olivier Latyk, boasts a shaded palette of peachy orange and cool greens, and elegant die-cut overlays, entirely appropriate to the original’s themes of illusion, perception and magic.

Mrs Noah’s Pockets | James Mayhew

In art, Yr4 focused on using different media to design and create their own garden. They used sharpies to design their own pebble to decorate our own school garden. Before you start sharing the story you might want to talk about the story of Noah’s Ark (see link below with a retelling). Read the story aloud to your child pausing to talk about what is happening in the story and the illustrations. Join in Using musical instruments, we completed some science showing how sounds travel, while making sounds that would be found in the garden. In her enthralling debut, I Have No Secrets (Electric Monkey), Penny Joelson undertakes a difficult task, narrating from the perspective of a character without speech: 14-year-old Jemma, who has cerebral palsy. Relishing her apparent helplessness, her carer’s boyfriend confides to her that he has committed a murder – but when a technological advance offers Jemma the chance of a voice, she becomes a danger to him. Both a compelling thriller and a warm, lively portrait of unusual family life, Joelson’s first book marks her out as a writer to watch.Mr Noah is busy building the ark and sorting out the pairs of animals to join him, anxious at the same time to ensure that the ‘troublesome creatures’ are not included. There is no explanation of which animals fall into this category. Meanwhile, Mrs Noah is busy sewing, clue in the title, and visiting parts of the woods that are her special domain. Mysterious and intriguing, what she is doing is not revealed until the ark finally finds land after the great rains and we see, in a series of beautiful illustrations, the fantastical creatures she has saved. In English, the children created their own hybrid ‘mythical creatures’ and then wrote non-chronological reports to give details about what they look like, their diets and their habitats. Look together at the rainy day pictures in the book and make your own. You could try with crayon or paint or draw lines, dashes and dots with a candle on paper and then paint with well diluted blue paint or ink. Be a weather spotter Andy Mulligan’s Dog (Pushkin), though less overtly fantastical, is another animal story with a difference. At its heart is the pain of rejection, felt both by unhappy boy Tom and by Spider, the runty reject puppy with the projecting tooth to whom Tom gives his heart after his parents’ separation. But Spider’s expensive mishaps and Tom’s ferocious anger – not to mention school bullies and the cruelties of an arachnid called Thread – seem to militate against a happy ending. Poignant, funny, savage and ultimately uplifting, this is Mulligan at the top of his challenging form. What might Mr Noah say when he finds the creatures he tried to get rid of still exist? You pretend to be Mr Noah and Mrs Noah and have an imaginary conversation.

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Keep a weather diary, or make a weather chart, and count how many days it rains in a week/ month. If there is a very rainy day, collect rainwater in a jam jar or measuring jug, and see how many centimetres of rain has fallen. Talk about the decisions the characters made in the story – Mr Noah deciding to get rid of ‘troublesome’ creatures and Mrs Noah deciding to save them. Those with strong stomachs, and a taste for still more sinister tales, should plunge with relish into Christmas Dinner of Souls (Faber), a splendidly rancid read from Ross Montgomery, with bug-eyed pictures from David Litchfield. An errant boy finds himself doomed to serve a disgusting Christmas dinner to the unsavoury faculty of Soul’s College – and to hear the gruesome stories accompanying each course. Will he make it through the night alive? This gleefully grisly departure from Montgomery’s gentler previous style should appeal to Goosebumps fans.We then read ‘Mrs Noah’s Garden’ which was focusing on renewal and starting afresh, just like we were doing in school. A memoir for childen aged 12 and over, Alex Bertie’s Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard (Wren & Rook) is a demystifying wander through the author’s life, from a transformative haircut to the various milestones – coming out to family, getting a doctor’s letter, starting testosterone – that mark his progress. At a time when trans identity can sometimes become a contentious issue, this engaging, humorous account, conveying deep feeling without straying into hysteria, is invaluable for anyone who is or who knows a transgender person. open-ended discussion points and activities to encourage the development of pupil independence, collaborative working and problem-solving