Kate Slater‘s first children’s picture book Magpie’s Treasure was published by Andersen Press in November 2010 and her second book, ABC London is now available for pre-order.

Kate has an etsy shop where you can buy her illustrations, stunning brooches, cards and ornaments. Some of my favourite items are these bird brooches:

And this whale print:

You can find Kate’s website here.
You can find Kate’s blog here.
Kate is on Twitter here.
And don’t forget, Kate’s shop is here.

Session 1

Book: The fantastic undersea life of Jacques Cousteau by Dan Yaccarino
Follow up book: Manfish: The Story of Jacques Cousteau by Jennifer Berne and Eric Puybaret
Focus activity: Watching a short video of Jacques Cousteau then creating a porthole through which creatures of the deep can be viewed.
Resources required: paper plates, strips of tissue paper in shades of blue, glue, permanent pens/crayons (make sure whatever you use does not run when glue is painted over it, and that the colours are strong enough to be visible through the tissue paper), scissors, grey paint (optional – for painting the plates to make them look more like portholes).
Independent activities: Set of ocean factfiles with colouring in and also some maths-based, ocean-themed activities all from learningpage.com (you need to sign up for access to these, but sign up is quick, easy and free)
Additional books: Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins, Star of the Sea: A Day in the Life of a Starfish by Janet Halfmann and Joan Paley

A porthole made from paper plates

1. Take one plate and draw a creature of the deep in the centre of the plate.
2. Glue strips of tissue paper across your plate (this will look best if the tissue paper has previously been scrunched up and is then smoothed out again)
3. Take your second plate and cut out the central circle. Optionally paint this plate gray.
4. Put glue around the rim of the first plate and stick the second plate on top to create your porthole
5. Trim away any excess tissue paper left hanging out between the plates.

Random House has produced a Teacher’s Sheet for The fantastic undersea life of Jacques Cousteau which contains lots of discussion prompts (opens as a pdf document).

Session 2

Book: Immi by Karin Littlewood (which I reviewed here)
Follow up book: Can you catch a Mermaid? by Jane Ray (which Cathy from Nurturestore reviewed here on Playing by the book)
Focus activity: Fishing for words
Resources required: Prepared fishing game made from laminated fish pictures with words from class dictionaries/encyclopedias on the reverse, and fishing rods with magnets on them, based on this earlier project at Playing by the book (but made more robust in order to put up with classroom love!), classroom dictionaries / reference books, record sheet (here’s one I made for us to use), pens (to record catch). Rather than making a new game you could adapt a shop bought one by simply putting stickers with words on the back of the fish.
Independent activities: Collaborative undersea mural from learningpage.com (you need to sign up for access to these, but sign up is quick, easy and free), creating and playing with a beach scene (large tray with some sand, water, plastic ocean animals, shells)
Additional books: Flotsam by David Wiesner (which I reviewed here), More, More, More by Dawn Casey and Nick Price.

Top tip: When preparing the fishing activity make sure you check the words you stick on your fish are actually to be found in the dictionaries / reference books you are using.

Teaching notes to go with the ocean mural

Session 3

Book: Little Boat by Thomas Docherty
Follow up book: 10 little rubber ducks by Eric Carle
Focus activity: Sinking and floating experiment: How does salt effect sinking/floating (see tutorial here at proteacher.org)? Children will be given this sheet to make their predictions and mark the results in plain water and salty water.
Resources required: Large bowls/bucket, salt, measuring jugs, potatoes, carrots, beans, worksheets for each table, water, kettle / warm water in flasks
Independent activities: Creating pictures with ocean and pirate themed stickers
Additional books: Whale by David Lucas (which I reviewed here), Big Blue Whale by Nicola Davies and Nick Maland

Which activities and books catch your eye? What do you think you would have fun doing?

Photo: Longhorndave

Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray, illustrated by Garry Parsons is both a wonderful celebration of the power of imagination and a warning to parents who do not take their children’s creativity seriously!

All Billy wants for his birthday is a bucket. Not a bike or a computer game. Just a bucket. His parents try unsuccessfully to persuade Billy otherwise but eventually a trip to Buckets-R-Us takes place. Billy returns home utterly delighted. He fills his bucket with water and so begin hours of play.

Every time Billy peers into his bucket he sees different watery worlds – crabs, sharks, divers, perhaps even a mermaid play in the water, and Billy is mesmerised by it all. His parents, on the other hand, are dismissive. They start off by humouring Billy (“What’s in your bucket now, Billy?” giggled his mum. “Seven sea lions and a walrus,” said Billy. “Of course there are, Billy,” laughed his mum and dad.) but soon they can’t resist teasing him a little; they try to persuade Billy to lend them his bucket so that they can use it for some household chores. Billy refuses. He loves his bucket and the worlds it contains. Indeed he goes to bed that night very happy – his bucket is “the best present in the world.”

The following morning Billy comes down to the kitchen to find his bucket missing. Although distraught it is Billy who ends up having the last laugh – it turns out his Dad borrowed the bucket to wash the car…and, well, let’s just say Billy’s Dad is now left looking somewhat foolish for not believing in Billy and the power of his imagination.

Please try to find a copy of Billy’s Bucket – the story is a fantastic testament to the power of imagination and a gentle reminder to those of us who might at times be far too sensible to believe in a little bit of magic. Kids will love it that Billy was proved right – there were, after all, marvellous sea creatures in his bucket, and parents will share a wry smile of recognition at the behaviour of Billy’s Mum and Dad. I also love the story for its delight in a simple birthday gift – a bucket – not a Wii or a trip to Disneyland – and in this respect it reminds me of Katie Cleminson’s Box of Tricks (which I reviewed here). Another book which could work well along side Billy’s Bucket is Polly Dunbar’s Penguin (which I reviewed here). All three are lovely birthday-themed books which rejoice in a child’s ability to imagine and create personal narratives.

The illustrations in Billy’s Bucket are bold and bright – J particularly enjoyed them. And whilst I don’t think they have the artistic flair of Katie Cleminson’s or Polly Dunbar’s illustrations they are nevertheless great fun to look at and an important part of why this book can hold the attention of both M (5) and J (1) at the same time.

To go with Billy’s Bucket we made our own buckets filled with sea creatures – but these were no ordinary buckets – their contents became our pudding one evening….

We used:

M made the gelatin as per the instructions on the packet, and simply added some blue food colouring for the “water” to go in the “buckets”. Jelly/Jello might work just as well, if you can get it in a blue colour . Once prepared, M poured the blue gelatin into the buckets where we left it to set for about an hour – just enough time for the gelatin to start firming up, but not for it to become too firm.

M then used a fork to push the sealife sweets into the water. Because the gelatin was already partly set the sea creatures appeared to float in the water and not sink all the way to the bottom.

Once the buckets were full of sea water and sea creatures they were left in the fridge to fully set.

Am I really showing you a photo of the inside of my fridge?? This is not at all what I anticipated when I started blogging…

Here’s our final collection of buckets full of wriggly sea life:

Here are the girls enjoying their buckets after dinner!

Billy’s Bucket:*** (3 stars)

And here’s the music we’ve been enjoying alongside Billy’s Bucket:

And just to show that some of my music is a little bit more up to date than the trio above we’ve also been listening to Ocean Night Song by Laura Veirs!

Other crafty activities which could work well alongside Billy’s Bucket include: