Session 1

Book: Shhh! by Sally Grindley and Peter Utton
Follow up book: Castles by Colin Thompson (which I reviewed here)
Focus Activity: Make a castle pop up card
Resources required: A4 card folded in half, castle template printed on paper and then pre-cut (if working with an older group or with more time in the session, the cutting could be left for the children to do), glue, pens / crayons / pencils to decorate
Independent activities: Giant colouring-in sheets, activity sheet based on local castle (Weoley Castle, NB link is to pdf file), castle dot-to-dot sheets, one from printactivities.com and another from dottodots.net.
Additional books: Castle by David MacCauley, The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Michael Foreman and Freire Wright. These additional books will be available for children to read / look at during the session, and also if needed by staff to read if there is “spare” time to be filled in the session.

Click here to download the castle template (a pdf file).

To create your card, line up the central fold in the A4 card with the central fold in the precut castle template. Stick glue on castle flaps. The castle should “fit inside” your card, even when the card is folded.

For other ideas about how to use Shhh! by Sally Grindley and Peter Utton in the classroom take a look at these lessons plans from Nursery World.

Session 2

Book: Tell me a dragon by Jackie Morris (which I reviewed here)
Follow up book: There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon by Jack Kent
Focus Activity: Make an egg box dragon inspired by this idea from Nurture Store but simplified to use only 1 egg box per child.
Resources required: egg boxes, paint & a paint brush (optional) , red paper, glue / sticky tape, black felt pens, scissors, googly eyes, green (or other coloured) paper
Independent activities: Castles colouring-in from castles.org, dragon colouring-in and dot-to-dot (latter opens as pdf file)
Additional books: That Pesky Dragon by Julie Sykes, The Knight and the Dragon by Tomie dePaola and Dexter Bexley and the Big Blue Beastie on the Road by Joel Stewart (which I reviewed here). These additional books will be available for children to read / look at during the session, and also if needed by staff to read if there is “spare” time to be filled in the session.

The egg carton can be painted if desired. Otherwise cut out tongue, tail and spines printed on red paper and glue to the egg carton. To create eyes, scrunch up paper into tight balls and glue them on top of the egg carton. Finally add googly eyes and draw on nostrils.

Session 3

Book: The Little Flower King by Kveta Pacovska
Follow up book: The Thistle Princess by Vivian French, illustrated by Elizabeth Harbour
Focus Activity: Planting tulips (in The Little Flower King the palace gardens are planted full with tulips)
Resources required: Tulip bulbs, soil, pots, containers (or a patch or earth, plus small spades)
Independent activities: Designing flags to hang from castle ramparts, using this (pdf) template, cocktail sticks and glue, two castle mazes, one featuring a knight, the other a unicorn and designing your own coat of arms.
Additional books: The Pea and the Princess by Mini Grey, Sleeping Beauty: A Pop-Up Book by Louise Rowe.

Photo: Noel Reynolds

As these are the session for the new Year 1 children (mostly aged 5) who are transitioning out of Foundation stage there will also be lots of free play activities available including castle toys with plastic figures, sandcastle building in the sandpits, and dressing up in the castle role play area.

Castles presents itself as a non-fiction book cataloguing a variety of magical and mysterious castles the author has seen or heard of. Each double page spread is filled with a gloriously detailed illustration of a castle, accompanied by a short commentary on where one might find the castle or who its inhabitants are. My favourites include the castle made of musical instruments (“It was built by a family of musicians who were tired of the neighbours complaining about their terrible music. It is three weeks by donkey to the nearest house so now the family can play as loudly as they like without disturbing anyone“) and another made out of mashed potato (“This is what happens when sensible people tell you to stop playing with your food and you ignore them.“).

Each castle hides secrets, and M loves looking for the kings, queens, princes and princesses on each page – a little like Where’s Wally?/Where’s Waldo?, only far more beautiful, and much more inspiring! The text will make you smile and the images will transport you to other worlds and times – this is a fabulous book for getting lost in! As a mum I also like that this is a great book about castles that isn’t full of battles, canons and fighting. Although there’s of course a place for that side of castles, it’s great to have a book that is much more about imagination and dreams than destruction and doom!

Photo by Khali from Little. Lovely, originally posted at Bloesem Kids.

With our imaginations all fired up after a reading of Castles, we turned to make the recycled castle I’d seen over at the always stylish Bloesem Kids.

What was so *brilliant* about Khali’s castle was (1) it uses materials that were all at hand (2) its design is fab – simple and bold, and (3) it is so easy to make. Often you come across project for kids and actually they’re rather complicated, time consuming and require a trip to the shops to get yet more stuff, but not so with Khali’s castle. It was just perfect for filling our Sunday afternoon.

All instructions for making the castle are over at Bloesem Kids. We added turrets to the towers (by making cones of construction paper), instead of making flags we happened to have some sandwich flags (like these) and decorated them instead, and we also provided some platforms inside the castle, just below the parapet, so that it was easy for the King and Queen and their entourage to look over the battlements at the scene below them (the platforms were made from shallow plastic trays – the sort you might find inside a packet of biscuits – sellotaped to the inside of the box).

We’ve had the castle for several days now and it is getting a LOT of play – a testament to its great design and the power of imagination!

Castles:

Whilst painting and playing with our castle we’ve been listening to Clapping in the Castle by Nancy Stewart and Castle on A Cloud from Les Misérables. Castles, unlike whales, don’t seem to feature often in songs!

Other castle activities I hope we’ll find time for include: