County fair

This week one of our focus children told the class about her visit to fete and later, she and a friend decided to make sand cakes, which soon became winning entries in a cake competition. Before long, a country fair had begun! The buzz in class was contagious and within a few moments, a tea stall was being set up, a menu had appeared on the giant chalkboard, cakes and pies were being made, faces were being painted, bunting and paper chains were being produced and the decking was being 'painted' (in muddy water!) in preparation for the start of the fair, and some of the boys took their toy dogs and the bears and constructed an obstacle course for them to race along. Several children made posters and one even wrote a list of jobs before moving on to writing a giant book about the fair. This again captured the interest of others and before long, the whole class were making giant books, telling stories about trips to the fair. We read 'Dogger' by Shirley Hughes, and some children wrote their own version whilst others wrote a description of what we had been doing in order to create our own fair. Amongst all this creativity, the children's learning powers were clearly

visible as, they worked with money, practiced their writing and phonic skills with labels, captions, signs and of course book making, and developed their interpersonal skills when role playing competition, waitressing and working cooperatively.