4th March Pancake Day

I love celebrating Pancake Day at school! The students love telling me about making pancakes, their favourite toppings and size. I have Kindergarten and preschool classes on Tuesdays so I always start with Christina Rossetti's poem Mix a Pancake. I have a very old poster of it, but there are plenty online if you don't know it. We do the actions and pretend to make pancakes and then we sit down for a feast and a chat about the pancakes we made. Good fun. Then I read a book. With the kindergarten classes I usually read my favourite pancake book, Princess Priscilla. I love the main character, the language, the repetition and the circular plot. Wiith the preschool classes I read a different book.

My library has a multitude of pancake books to display and I like to put out some recipe/cooking books with pancakes in the index as well,  as the students like to borrow cook books. Below is a collection of stories to look for:

 

Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday)

I love Pancake Day in the library, especially when it is with Kindergarten. Today I had my second lesson with them, so the library experience is still new for many of them and they are so awestruck by it all. We made actions to go with Christina Rossetti's poem Mix a Pancake.

The students were so proud of themselves learning a poem so quickly that they surprised their teacher by reciting it when she came to pick them up.



We also read Princess Priscilla by Stacey Apeitos. My all-time favourite pancake book. It is out of print and shouldn't be. We need to lobby publishers. In this story a feisty young princess outwits a hungry dragon by feeding him pancakes smothered in sleeping potion. The pancakes are delivered by skateboard and lance. The vocabulary is outstanding. So many wonderful words to talk about...drowsy; droop; dungeon; armoury; hollered; bellowed; lugged; potion to mention only a few.

The other good thing is that children and parents borrow cook books on Pancake Day! The children win all round! Fun in the library and fun with Mum and Dad cooking.

 

5th December Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

Christina Rossetti was an English poet who came from a very talented family of poets and painters. She wrote poetry for adults as well as children, but these poems tended to focus on love, death and religion whereas many of her children's poems focussed on natural phenomena. Children's poetry anthologies include poems such as Who Has Seen the Wind?; Flint; Caterpillar and Hurt No Living Thing. Years ago Scholastic had Eric Carle illustrate this last poem on a Book Club poster and I still enjoy displaying it at child height for the children to read. Teachers use Flint to teach similes and children like to recite Who Has Seen the Wind? because it is just the right length to learn by heart. It has a balance between being concrete enough to understand but obscure enough to be mysterious.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can give Him: give my heart.

It is fitting at this time of year to share Christina's poem What Shall I Give Him? which is actually the last stanza of her poem In the Bleak Long Winter. Debi Gliori used these words as the inspiration for her picture book Give Him My Heart. In this book she interweaves the story of two young girls who want to give a present to someone special. I have it in my library so I will share it at school tomorrow!