The Great Fairytale Disaster

This half term we will become fairytale detectives helping to find the problem in stories and using our story detective skills try to solve the problem. We will be reading lots of tradition fairytale including;

• The three little pigs
• The three Billy goats gruff
• Goldilocks and the three bears
• The enormous turnip
• The gingerbread man

Today we received a mysterious parcel. It was delivered to the office by the postman. Mrs Thorpe brought it through to us and told us. It was addressed to Reception, so we took this through into Birch class to share it with them.

What was inside? Where had it come from?

Logan and Oakley opened it up...

Inside there was;

• a book
• a map
• 2 big magnifying glasses
• 40 small magnifying glasses
• a red dress
• a ribbon

But who could the dress belong too?

Here are a couple of our ideas...

We really loved the "You Choose" book. We enjoyed choosing who we would be in a story, where we would go, what we would wear and where we would live! We also shared the fairytale version of the book too!

This got us thinking about what kind of character we would be in our own stories. Have a look below at some of our ideas...

Today we were transported to the 3 bears house. We watched Goldilocks arrive! She ate all of Baby Bears porridge, broke Baby Bears chair and then fell asleep in his bed! As she was asleep, Little Red Riding Hood appeared and woke her up. As she woke, she ran away and Little Red Riding Hood searched the house for clues.

The next day we received a note from Goldilocks asking us if we could make the most perfect porridge. The children loved making their own bowl of porridge. Some children even had honey on theirs just like the three bears! Some of the children loved their porridge and ate it all up. Others didn't really like it.

We then wrote about our porridge, see below for some examples...

Today we arrived at school to find lots of different footprints throughout the Reception classrooms! We used our magnifying glasses to investigate them. They were all difference shapes and sizes.

There were also lots of crumbs scattered around too...

After investigating the children shared some ideas about what they thought had happened and who had been...

After lots of thinking, we decided that the crumbs were from the gingerbread man and the footprints were from the animals chasing him!

Look at the fabulous writing we have done to show which animals chased him.

We also really enjoyed baking our own Gingerbread men this week! The children did a fantastic job. They had to weigh out their ingredients to make the dough. Then they had to roll their dough and cut out their own gingerbread man.

In Science this week we discussed why the Gingerbread Man got onto the foxes back to get across the river. Why didn't he just swim across the river himself? What would happen if he did do this?

We looked at what would happen to him in the river by placing a gingerbread biscuit into water. The children said straight away "he has sunk". 

We noticed he changed colour as he soaked up the water. I asked one of the children if we could get him back out of the water. As they tried to lift him out he crumbled and fell apart. We talked about how this was an irreversible change and we could never put him back together.

We then started to think of other ways we could get him across the river...

After lots of discussions and ideas shared of the best way to get him across the river safely, we decided we would make him a boat. We looked at different boats on Google for ideas. We looked at what a boat needed. We also discussed what we thought could make a good boat. The children then went off to make their own boats...

We then tested our boats in the water tray. What happened to our boats? What materials made the best boat? Why?

This morning we had another mystery to investigate on the field. We became detectives once again and explored the hay, wood and bricks. Who had left this on the field?

The children had a lot of ideas...

We have enjoyed reading and retelling the story of the three little pigs all week. We have used masks and puppets to help us role play. 

We then thought about how the big bad wolf was still out there somewhere. How could we stop him? We created some wanted posters to help find him! 

This morning Mr Cockcroft came to ask for our help. He needed help bringing in a mysterious parcel that had been left outside in our mud area. He was so busy in school he didn't have time to go and get it himself.

The package was SO heavy! It was really hard to lift. After a few children had a go at trying to lift it we started to think about how we could get it inside...

We all lifted and pulled it together and carried it inside as a team!! Hooray!

Later on, we read The Enormous Turnip. They used teamwork to try and pull it out just like us. Look below for our writing about who pulled the turnip...

Today to bring our latest story to life we went to Middleton Park. The children walked there sensibly and were really well behaved the whole visit!

After the long walk there the children were thirsty, we found somewhere to sit and we all had some milk or water!

We then walked into the woods further and shared this weeks story, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The children loved role playing the goats and trip trapping over the bridge! Little did we know that Mrs Burke was pretending to be the troll underneath! It was great fun.

Before setting off back to school for our dinner, we just had time to play in the play area! We had a lovely morning.

We have loved retelling the story in different ways this week. The children especially loved making a bridge with our large construction bricks and using our puppets to retell the story.

The character we all found the most interesting was the troll. We looked at pictures of the fairytale character and began discussing his characteristics with our talk partners. 

We then recorded our ideas by drawing and writing about the troll...

Our detective days are complete! 

We now had to write the greatest fairytale of all, our own! We did this in groups of two or three children. The children had to plan the character description, the setting and the story. We remembered that a story always has a beginning, a middle and an end. Look below at some of our beginnings, middles and ends that together make our own fairytales...