On the Way Home

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Read It: ‘ The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle, is a beautifully illustrated story of the life cycle of a flower. Jill Murphy’s character, Claire,has a very vivid imagination and her wild explanations for her injured knee include wolves, dragons, flying saucers and giants. I think the story is a great portrayal of the power of a child’s imagination. Like Claire, my daughter is going through a phase where she gives wonderfully fantastical explanations about everyday occurrences and the line between truth and fantasy can be blurred at times. Gather some objects such as counters, cubes etc and give some to a partner. Keep some for yourself. Can you say who has more? Who has less? What sort of language would you use to describe this? (Greater than, less than) Look at the use of capital letters in the story. Why has the author written some words in CAPITALS?

Can you design a pond or an aquarium to keep animals such a Tiddler in? It could be whatever shape you like and you can decorate it with different things to make it a lovely home for the animals. Task 4–Can you write a letter from the mermaid to the friends she left behind in the ocean, asking for their help, to help her escape from the circus? Remember to tell them all about your new friends in the circus and that Sly Sam is keeping you in a small fish tank to try and persuade them that you need saving! Try to use some 2As ( sunny, fresh) and remember to use conjunctions ( BOYS - but, or, yet, so) to extend your sentences.

Jill Murphy is one of the UK’s most treasured author-illustrators and was the creator of many bestselling books for children, including the Bear Family picture books Peace at Last, Whatever Next! and Just One of Those Days which together have sold over four million copies worldwide. Task 5–Can you have a go at re-writing the story from the view point of the crab? You could write it as a story or as a recount. Once you have written the story, you could illustrate it by drawing lots of colourful pictures. Encourage your child to make notes, drawings, maps and/or models in answer to the research questions. Respond to any questions they have by referring them to the information books available. Find out the answers to their questions with them, reading to them from the books. Can you create a jellyfish or an octopus out of a paper plate and bits of material, paper or arts and craft pieces you have in your house?

After reading the story could you tell somebody in your house an adventure you’d like to go on and why? Maybe you could even ring a friend or another family member and ask them what adventure they’d like to go on! Watch the video at https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zhk82hv/articles/zcmdwxs to help explain half past the hour. The word problems are differentiated and children can complete all or those they are comfortable with. The first problem involves addition to 20, the second to 100 and the third to 200.

My copy of On the Way Home has a different picture on the cover and is old, battered and well loved. It was well read when I first started teaching and it’s now the perfect story for my daughter who is trying to make sense of real characters versus fantasy characters, we have long conversations about the reality of ghosts, giants and dragons! of seeds being planted. (Possible discussion points: What does the word ‘sow’ mean? How did they prepare the soil? What do plants need to grow? What other vegetables grow under ground?)

Discussion points: Were all the things halved in the video cut or split in the same way? What was special about each half? Can you find any other things around your house that you could halve and share with someone else? If you want to challenge yourself, draw or paint your own lady bird with spots on. Make sure that the numbers are doubles (e.g 4 spots and 4 spots) and then write the sum of the doubles underneath (4 spots + 4 spots = 8 spots altogether) To make observations about the toys from the past and present – look at the colours, materials and whether it has any electronic parts. Make notes of your observations in each box and discuss the similarities and differences. Try to answer the pink for think challenge question. Week 1 of The Magic Toymaker

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Task 5 – This story has examples of onomatopoeia, such as snap and splash. (Remember onomatopoeia is when the word makes the sound that it is describing e.g. boom, crash, bang.) Can you create a poster using onomatopoeia words? Be as creative as you like with your poster. For example, you could change the way you write the words, you could write them in different sizes and use a range of colours. We have attached an example below to give you some ideas: Task 1–On the attached document there are 10 poems from the book typed out in bubbles. It is your job to use your super detective skills to work out what animal each poem is describing. Once you have done this, we would love it if you could underline or highlight the rhyming words in each poem which is something you should all be experts at by now! Task 2–The story starts with the question ‘Whatever Next?’. Can you think of other questions about the story? Baby Bear goes into space in the story, so maybe you could write some questions about space? Think about the 5W's (Who? What? Where? When? Why?) and remember the punctuation needed at the end of a question.