world book day — Oakridge Allotment 01

Yesterday, the school celebrated World Book Day in style. Instead of asking pupils to dress up like many other schools across the county, we invited a real life author to our allotment! The children were indulged in the wonderful world of reading the Oakridge way.

Julie Fulton is a renowned creator and writer of children's picture books including Bears Don't Eat Egg Sandwiches and Greedy Mrs MacCready. It would be fair to say that her visit left a lasting impression on all of the children with many feeling incredibly inspired to become authors, writers and publishers.

The morning was split into two sessions - KS1 and KS2. KS1 enjoyed listening to Julie's stories and hearing all about what it means to be a writer. It was lovely to see them so engaged and inspired by what Julie was saying.

They then acted out the story of the Enormous Potato, narrated by a year 2. It was rather apt after planting their first potatoes the previous week. It brought a smile to everyone's faces.

The Enormous Potato reads much like the story of the Enormous Turnip, where the mouse pulled the cat and the cat pulled the dog and the dog pulled the son and the son pulled the wife and the wife pulled the farmer and so on! It was super to see reading brought to life in such a hands on way.

Class 1’s session finished with a craft activity that was based on Julie’s story, “Bears Don’t Eat Egg Sandwiches.” They designed their own plates of disgusting food and food they liked.

KS2's topic was poems, in particular haikus, which consist of just three lines that use a simple 5-7-5 syllable structure. Julie asked the children to have a go at writing one, using things they might find at an allotment as their inspiration.

The children have since taken everything they learned that morning back to the classroom. This week KS1 have been making egg sandwiches and writing story boards to construct stories from. KS2 have emailed their poems off to Julie to include on her website.

The school is extremely grateful to Julie for coming to visit. Staff and parents felt the activity was enormously beneficial. It gave learning context and how wonderful for the children to meet a real life author. The inspiration and motivation in the children has been clear to see this week, with parents coming into school saying how their little ones want to become writers and that they are busy making their own books at home.

The school hopes to invite Julie back again in the Summer for more story telling adventures on the allotment. Thank you World Book Day.

Today the children enjoyed a World Book Week themed gardening club with local worm and soil expert, Fred Miller, who works for local community group, Down To Earth Stroud. It’s a great network of people who have been incredibly supportive of our school’s new allotment adventure.

Fred came on board to help install the children’s new wormery and provide guidance about how to use it as well as give insight and raise awareness about the importance of our wiggly friends.

The session began with a talk about worms, the roles they play and how to go about finding them. Very quickly, a dozen or so children were enthusiastically digging up the soil to find the biggest and most wriggliest of them all!

Who knew there were so many different varieties? The children found compost worms, brandling worms, green worms, red earth worms, worms with a saddle, worms with yellow rings and rosy tipped worms. There was much excitement. It always gives so much joy to see children outside, getting their hands dirty and really appreciating the natural world and everything it has to offer.

Attention soon turned towards the school’s new wormery and Fred gave an incredibly useful workshop about how to set it up and look after it.

The children helped gather organic matter and carefully separated the banana skins and apple cores from the citrus fruits, (worms don’t like the acidic flavour of oranges.)

The session ended on a real high with a spot of worm racing, a suggestion made by one of the parent volunteers. It went down extremely well. Those children who had been squeamish about handling the worms were soon picking them up and cuddling them as if they were cute fluffy bunnies! Great to see so much love for these fab little beasts.

Worm racing turned out to be captivating , edge of your seat entertainment!! The objective was to see which worm could get it’s whole body out of the circle first. Wonderful to hear the children screaming words of encouragement - the worms were true professionals and weren’t at all phased by the pressure!

As with most competitions, it was a close race and although there was no photo finish, there was clearly some discrepancy over the winner!

The session ended with a few worm facts, which the children read out helped by a worm puppet sock! A thoroughly entertaining, educational and enthralling gardening club. Heaps was learned and loads of worms were found. Knowledge has been passed on from one generation to the next. A big thank you to Fred for giving up his free time to come and talk to the children and share his enthusiasm.