In the ongoing, delightful craziness that is my work with Whitefield Infant School, the Reception classes (4 year olds, just turning 5) had been working on senses and cookery. So when it came time to work with me and visit the lcoal park, we explored Victoria Park as chefs, designing pizzas for the animals (real, hoped for or monstrous) that live there
My brief is to encourage classes to use the local environment and to help inspire language….The poems are the children’s own words and images. My job is to shuffle them into an order….I love the language
Getting to the Park itself caused certain issues….
IN THE PARK
Snow is slowly drifting down.
Falling in the water,
Melting,
Snow pirates sailing on the river
In the cold, cold, freezing cold
Magic flowers are growing,
There are suns made of snow
And stars
And rainbows of snow and ice,
In the cold, cold, freezing cold
Snow butterflies,
And snow trees,
Snow spiders and
Snow birds
In the cold, cold, freezing cold
Icicles grow everywhere
On fingers and noses
And ears and eyes
And faces and eyebrows and chins,
In the cold, cold, freezing cold
Ducks with cold toes are swimming
Racing us round the pond
Hoping for bread
But our pockets are empty,
In the cold, cold, freezing cold
But polar bears are waiting to roar
And penguins are sitting in the penguin houses,
Dinosaurs have snowball fights
And the troll sits in the tunnel waiting for spring
In the cold, cold, freezing cold
Class 1, Whitefield Infant and Nursery School
Nut we were bold and resolute and a’pizzaing we did go…..
VICTORIA PARK PIZZA
Our pizza smells, of strong green leaves,
muddy brown leaves, red cherries
and blue jellies
Our pizza
Sounds like the wind in the trees, shouting children,
Feet trip trapping through the
Castle tunnel where the monster lives
Our pizza
Has tomato and cheese, mud and mushrooms.
Cheese and chicken and chips, pine cones and pepsi,
Cups and kites, leaves and lentils,
Ducks, pineapples and glass
Our pizza party has
Ladybirds and lions, elephants and owls,
Squirrels, dogs and gingerbread men
Our pizza will
Taste beautiful and wonderful and we
Will need a map to get past the troll
Class 2 Whitefield Infant School
Perhaps the best bit of all this was eavesdropping on one girl who, after 2 hours of solid classroom work – everyone else had stopped and was relaxing or pottering about doing other things, but she was till going strong and having a careful conversation with the rabbit she was designing a pizza for and explaining to her just what delicious foods she (the girl) was choosing for her (the rabbit)