Tag Archives: Whitefield Infant School

Perfect Park Pizza

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…..

a tasty selection

VICTORIA PARK PIZZA

 

Our pizza smells, of strong green leaves,

muddy brown leaves, red cherries

and blue jellies

fried egg and useful glue-spreader to help in eating!

 

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

 

a sliced-flower pizza for butterflies

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

 

a pizza in the Park, ready for sharing

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)

Stories for a lonely Beast

Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve been working with children from Whitefield Infant School at Wycoller Country Park.

 

Wycoller Hall is ruined now

 

Each of three Year 2 classes has had a day at the Park working with musician Steve Brown and myself, using the wonderful Wycoller environment to inspire stories, poems songs and music about the Lonely Beast. In the book by Chris Judge, the Lonely Beast goes all over the world looking for other beasts to befriend…we picked up on his arrival in Wycoller….here are a couple of the children’s poems

 

the beautiful arches of the Packhorse Bridge

Arriving at Wycoller

The Lonely Beast went to Wycoller and saw

 

1 ruin where there might be dangerous ghosts, and saw

2 dogs barking loudly behind the gates, and heard

3 birds singing in the trees, and saw

4 slippery, mossy rocks beside the river, and saw

5 parked cars with nobody in them, and saw

6 houses full of frightened people, and took

7 big steps to get up the steep hill, and heard

8 chattering children splashing through the river, and heard

9 quacking ducks racing across the pond and saw

10 leaves drifting beside the high trees

climb up the long stair....


 

 

 

 

 

 

How to find a Wycoller beast

Look under the bridge over the fast, stony river

For trolls in the shadows and slime,

Creep beside the river, with the tall trees dropping leaves,

Run up the long stairs where the goblins hide,

Then back down the path, sliding in the mud,

By the pond where the ducks play

And in the ruins, inside the fireplace,

Maybe Beasts hide there