UK department store Sainsbury’s features Judith Kerr’s famous book character, Mog the cat, in an advertisement for the Christmas season. These ads are also excellent examples of persuasive visual texts.
Sainsbury’s official Christmas advert 2015 – Mog’s Christmas calamity
Sainsbury’s official Christmas 2014 ad – 1914
And the current ad is:
Sainsbury’s official Christmas advert 2016 – The greatest gift
The last time The ugly duckling came along in our K-2 literacy cycle, I made use of some personal photos taken of a Hans Christian Andersen memorial statue at Sydney’s Observatory Hill.
The ugly duckling – Silly symphony Walt Disney 1939
Our Khaki Campbell ducks~
Khaki Campbell… ducks a must see!!!
Make way for ducklings, the famous picture book by Robert McCloskey, and based on a real life event, is also immortalized in statue form at Boston Common, USA. These statues get dressed thematically at various times of the year.
Students in Stage 1 and Early Stage 1 have been researching bear facts, as a result of reading variations on the fairy tale, “Goldilocks and the three bears”.
Fun facts about bears
Grizzly bears catching salmon – Nature’s great events – BBC
Students in Early Stage 1 and Stage 1 have been studying the Aboriginal Dreaming Story of “How the birds got their colours”. This week, they are investigating birds. Our playground is currently well-populated with large crows (or ravens?) and the students have been enjoying (or being blamed for) their hilarious antics: tossing scraps out of the bins, stealing shiny rocks from a memorial garden, and frog-marching pigeons out of the playground.
I found some fascinating Youtube videos that demonstrate the intelligence of crows, as they complete an exercise involving a three-step plan, and then an eight-step plan.
Crow intelligence – multi-step tool action test
Are crows the ultimate problem solvers? – Inside the animal mind – BBC
Smart crow uses cars to crack nuts in Akita, Japan near Senshu Park
Remember Aesop’s fable of “The crow and the pitcher”?
Causal understanding of water displacement by a crow
Past student book rappers created a digital slideshow on Photo Peach to accompany our work on the Aboriginal Dreaming story, How the whale got a hole in his head:
How the whale got a hole in his head
Humpback whale shows amazing appreciation after being freed from nets
Additional audiovisual resources on whales, starfish and barnacles, used in previous years of the cycle, are HERE.