Grapheme focus

Cheese /z/se/

Some/ Mother /u/o-e/o/ou/

Phone /f/ph/

Giant /j/g/

Wheel /w/wh/

Metal/ Apple /l/le/al/

Fence/Mouse /s/se/ce/

Funny /ee/y/

Head /e/ea/

Toe/Shoulder /oa/oe/ou

Give /v/ve/

Fruit/Soup /oo/ui.ou/

Grapheme Focus

Donkey /ee/ey/

Fly /igh/y/

Ice /s/c

Snow /oa/ow/

Mummy always keeps a box that she calls her “Rainy-Day Box.” She places items like toilet roll holders, egg cartons, paint, scissors, glue, string, pipe cleaners, and anything else she thinks may be useful. Sometimes when we are out shopping, she will buy extra things to put into the box. Paper plates, felt, stickers, and goggle eyes are bought from time to time. Mummy also looks at the “Special Aisle” in the supermarket to see if there is something different to add to the box. Mummy sees things and different uses for them. It makes us think about what she will do with us next. Verity and I always smile at each other as we know we will do something exciting.

Yesterday we woke up early. It had rained through the night, and it continue to rain. The back garden looked like a pond. There was no way known that we could go outside to play. Mummy was already in the kitchen, and she had started to make breakfast. She made her delicious cheese on toast. Some people like to dip their cheese and toast in tea, milk, or coffee. But Mummy says that it is usually young mothers who like to do that. I looked at Verity as if to say does that mean that our Mummy is old!

The phone rang. Imi’s mum had car troubles. A giant piece of metal had gone into the wheel of her car. With all the rain, the front fence had crashed into the car. She asked if we could look after Imi. When we heard Imi’s name, both Verity and I jumped up and down. “Yes!” I said, as I assumed she was coming over to play. Mummy then told us that Mrs Cotswold would drop Imi off at our house. We jumped up and down again.

We had never met Mrs Cotswold before. She was a short lady who smiled a lot. Mrs Cotswold had a floral scarf on her head, bright red lipstick on her lips and she wore a big brown coat. The coat had a big fur collar that looked like she had a mouse on her shoulder. The funniest thing of all was that she had boots on that had a hole. Her big toe poked out of the hole. Imi saw us look at the toe and then we looked at each other and laughed out aloud. Mrs Cotswold gave out a big laugh after Mummy said something funny. When she laughed her whole tummy wobbled. Mummy laughed when Mrs Cotswold spoke.

“Give me your coat and shoes!” said Mummy to Imi. Imi put on slippers and then came into the kitchen. We sat at the table and Mummy made some morning tea. Mummy gave us milk and fruit. She cut up an apple for us to eat. We sat and chatted and Imi told us about the fence and the car. It all sounded interesting.

Mummy cleaned the kitchen table and placed newspaper on it to look like a tablecloth. She then picked up her rainy-day box and placed it on the table. We all looked and wondered what we would do. She took out some egg cartons and cut them up. Mummy showed us how to make animals from the section of the egg carton. We painted the cardboard first and then used pipe cleaners, card, and goggle eyes to make our own animal. I made a dinosaur, Imi made a donkey and Verity made a jellyfish.

We had some extra egg cartons and Mummy showed us how to make a home for our animals. Imi made a farm scene; Verity made an under the ocean scene and I made a dinosaur park. We painted, cut card, glued and added our own drawings to our egg cartons. They looked spectacular when we had finished. Mummy put our work to one side to dry. We cleaned up the kitchen table and got ready for lunch.

Mummy had made vegetable soup. We talked about the vegetables we like and dislike. Mummy gave us crusty bread to dip into the soup. We watched the crispy bread go soft. It was delicious to eat. Imi said she liked spicy food. Her family eats curry often. Verity and I like Japanese food and eat noodles, rice, and miso. Imi said she had never had miso before. Mummy made her some, but she found it too bitter. We said that it was probably because she was eating sweet soup that the miso then tasted bitter. We all laughed. Mummy gave us more fruit to eat for dessert.

After lunch, Mummy brought out her rainy-day box again. This time she took out string and toilet roll holders. Verity and I had played with these before. I said, “Let’s make cable cars in the lounge room!”  We all agreed that would be fun to do.

Verity and Imi helped hold the string whilst I taped the string to different furniture. I checked to see that I could move the toilet roll holder from one part of the string to another. I placed one piece of string on a door handle and the other I taped to the ground. This meant that the toilet roll holder could fly from the doorknob to the ground.

We all stood back and looked at the maze of string that criss-crossed the lounge room. Imi said, “We need snow and ice!” Verity said, “I know how to make a snowflake!” So, we all moved back to the kitchen table and Verity folded a piece of paper and cut out bits from the paper. When she unfolded the paper, it made a snowflake. We placed the snowflakes around the lounge room to make it look like we were in snowy mountains. We thought it looked good.