This week, we were taken to a forest, just like the setting of Owl Babies. We explored the woodland and used our senses to imagine how the owl babies might have felt in the story.
We saw dark green ivy hanging from the trees and listened carefully to the sounds around us. We could hear crickets chirping and hooting noises, just like those that come from a sleeping forest at night. It helped us to picture the owl babies waiting for their mummy owl.
We read the story ‘Owl Babies’ together and learned signifiers to help us retell the story. We then worked together to draw large story maps, showing the key events from the beginning, middle and end of the story.
We also built a huge nest in our classroom using natural materials we found around us. We thought carefully about how the nests might feel and used lots of descriptive words to explain them. Some of us said they felt soft, cosy, warm and safe, while others noticed that twigs could feel rough, prickly or scratchy.
To help us imagine the forest even more, Miss Carrick made it rain in the classroom! We thought about how the weather would affect our nests and noticed that they became damp and wet, just as they might in a real forest.
Additionally, to explore the setting of the book further, we turned off all the lights to make our classroom feel like a dark forest at night. Miss Carrick shone a small torch on the children to represent the moonlight shining through the trees. As we sat in the darkness, some of us started to feel a little scared and worried. This helped us understand how Sarah, Percy and Bill felt when they woke up and realised their mummy was gone. We talked about their emotions and how they must have felt while waiting for her to return.
