Stu Duval, Storyteller

Yesterday Stu Duval came to our school to talk about storytelling. At the beginning he told us that pictures can tell a story as much as using a thousand words can. He got us to suggest letters and numbers he could use then he made these into cartoon pictures. It was really funny and amazing. He was so fast at drawing. Next he told us about where he got his ideas for stories, this one was about Huia Bay and a big kauri tree. He drew an amazing picture with chalk pastels and then told a very funny story about Captain Black Custard and Lamington Lil. He wasn't a pirate who was interested in fighting or treasure, he and his pirate crew were crazy for....pudding! They had spoons instead of swords in their belts, and their ship was called The Apple Tart.
We learnt that storytellers get ideas from ordinary things, and exciting days they have and they work these ideas into their stories to make something beautiful. Stu told us it was kind of like cooking up a vegetable soup in a big pot. He used lots of great descriptive adjectives and phrases, and powerful verbs.
We had lots of fun listening to him. At the end of his time with us, he had a quiz to see which class could win the picture he had drawn. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for them, Room 15 won it!

Grandparents' Day

This morning we were lucky enough to have ten grandparents come in to our classroom to tell us stories from when they were growing up. Some other grandparents who live far away, or who couldn't make it today, sent us stories and interviews to share. We invited them in to help us answer our big Rich Task question:

"Some people think we are made of flesh and blood and bone, but I think we are made of stories...." who keeps the stories alive?

We heard about cats getting milk straight from the cows, a game called Rounders, pedal cars on the roof of the Farmers' building, children getting milk given to them at school every day, milk being delivered by a horse and cart, broken collarbones from falling out of trees, playing cowboys and Indians, maths being called arithmetic, smudging ink when writing stories, riding horses to school and lots of other amazing stories. 

We shared some food we had made with the grandparents to say thank you to them for coming. We had savoury muffins with spinach, broccoli and spring onions from our garden, beetroot and chocolate cake with beetroot from our garden (it was so delicious no one could believe it had beetroot in it!) and fresh carrots, celery and broccoli from the garden with hummous. It was a wonderful morning!

Harvesting The Garden

After a long wait, and lots of time finding out how to scare the birds away, yesterday we harvested vegetables from our garden. We got beetroot, carrots, spinach, broccoli, lettuce, celery and spring onions. It was very exciting! We are still waiting for our broad beans and sugar snaps. They have flowers on them and we have seen bees buzzing around so perhaps it won't take very long.