This story was read aloud by Mini Grey at an author visit to our school this week. All the staff and children thought it was absolutely brilliant! PerThis story was read aloud by Mini Grey at an author visit to our school this week. All the staff and children thought it was absolutely brilliant! Perhaps one of Grey's less known books, this story is hilarious! Two rabbits take over a magic show and wreak havoc. The story is eventful, funny, and witty. The illustrations are overflowing with detail and hidden jokes. Ample rhyme makes this book great for KS1 and audience participation....more
Used this book this term with my Year 2 class. Great story for introducing different forms of communication. The familiar characters allow the childreUsed this book this term with my Year 2 class. Great story for introducing different forms of communication. The familiar characters allow the children to engage with text types they are unfamiliar with. Children have written postcards, speech bubbles, and letters linking to the text this term. We have also looked at the history of bicycles and communication and looked at maps in Geography. 4 stars because I find the story a bit bland and unexciting....more
This book made me laugh! Some of the rhyming pairs don't quite work, but I think the message about making friends with books to explore new worlds is This book made me laugh! Some of the rhyming pairs don't quite work, but I think the message about making friends with books to explore new worlds is great! I also really like the fact that on every page one of the bookworms disappears! You could definitely do a unit of Maths work for KS1 based on this book and make up a little song to go alongside it too (10 green bottles)! Only £1 on Amazon at the moment so can't go wrong really!...more
Another 5/5 for Donaldson! In love with the illustrations in this story! The delicate, pencil/watercolour mix and child-like style is right up my streeAnother 5/5 for Donaldson! In love with the illustrations in this story! The delicate, pencil/watercolour mix and child-like style is right up my street and fits the content of the story perfectly. The storyline is just lovely and completely relatable to most children - creating adventures out of all the inanimate objects lying around the house. The story also gently eludes to and introduces the topic of death/loss through the paper dolls entering the girl's memory and discovering what else is hidden there eg. a kind granny. Donaldson has done it again in this book by creating brilliant rhyming patterns that are easy to remember and recite. Another KS1 must have!...more
So I was on a bit of a roll of giving Donaldson's books 5/5, until I got to this one. Not a fan of the illustrations and storyline is seriously lackinSo I was on a bit of a roll of giving Donaldson's books 5/5, until I got to this one. Not a fan of the illustrations and storyline is seriously lacking. It feels a bit like Donaldson had lots of half-hearted poems about animals which she has chucked into a book about a rabbit who rhymes. Also, the other characters are all unnecessarily harsh to Rhyming Rabbit which could quite easily be misconstrued by children that poetry is wrong or boring. On top of that, the ending is dull, dull, dull. If you're a Julia Donaldson fan, give this one a miss. Stick to her pieces of genius with Axel Scheffler (oh and 'The Paper Dolls' with Rebecca Cobb is pretty good too!)...more
My current Y1 class are massive Julia Donaldson fans and so naturally, I have been working my way through her many books! This is one of Donaldson's moMy current Y1 class are massive Julia Donaldson fans and so naturally, I have been working my way through her many books! This is one of Donaldson's more recent picture books and it is magnificent! The story is about two aliens, a Smed who is red and a Smoo who is blue. The Smeds and Smoos are not allowed to play with each other, but Janet, the Smed, and Bill, the Smoo, meet and fall in love! It's an alien, rhyming, twisted take on Romeo and Juliet! This story deals with very relevant and current topics such as unknown 'others', people's differences, showing love and kindness, acceptance, friendship, teamwork, and refugees (Donaldson dedicates the book to all the children of Europe). The jargon and rhymes also massively lend themselves to phonics work - especially when looking at nonsense/alien words! Another KS1 book corner must have! ...more
This book is so funny! I was laughing alongside the Y1 chn as I read this aloud to them today! Fantastic book for work on rhymes in KS1! The illustratiThis book is so funny! I was laughing alongside the Y1 chn as I read this aloud to them today! Fantastic book for work on rhymes in KS1! The illustrations are comedic and memorable - they represent the rhyming pairs perfectly which helps chn to remember them. I love how the story gradually builds up and builds up, to a point where there is almost relentless rhyming, to then finish where we started. The difference at the end being that there is no text - the chn know the rhyming pairs so well that they can predict and call out what the picture is!
My teacher mentor on SBT2 introduced me to this book knowing that one of the lessons in my two week unit of English planning/teaching focuses on rhyming patterns in 'Zog' by Julia Donaldson. In the lesson I focused on the rhymes present in 'Zog' and asked the Y1 chn to identify, recall, and then create their own rhymes for the story. The chn then wrote a retelling of 'Zog'. At the end of the lesson, we read 'Oi Frog' to embed their knowledge of rhyming patterns/pairs, but also build in text-text connections. ...more
Great collection of poems about climate crisis, sustainability, the environment, food waste, plastic, consumptions, and all things eco-friendly! More sGreat collection of poems about climate crisis, sustainability, the environment, food waste, plastic, consumptions, and all things eco-friendly! More suitable for KS2, however there are some poems that I think KS1 would enjoy hearing read aloud! I would certainly use this collection during a related topic and encourage the chn to think of some of their own. Lends itself to being imitated as a class poem book. My only issue with the book is that I know chn could actually come up with better poems than many of the ones included. Feels to me that just because a poem might be climate crisis-related, it's just been thrown in there without being quality checked! Still I fun book regardless though!...more
I have honestly sat staring at the page for some time thinking about how to write a review which does this book justice.
I haven't been this emotionallI have honestly sat staring at the page for some time thinking about how to write a review which does this book justice.
I haven't been this emotionally attached to a picture book since I was a child.
This book inspired and allowed me to teach the best two weeks of lessons I have ever taught. This book saw my confidence grow as a teacher and facilitated opportunities in the classroom I didn’t know were possible.
Zog, the biggest dragon at Dragon School, learns different skills throughout the book, with a few blunders along the way. But with the help of Princess Pearl, he eventually wins a golden star and agrees to go out and help other people/creatures as an ambulance for the flying doctors: Princess Pearl and Gadabout. What I especially like about this story is the message of perseverance shown through Zog’s repeated efforts to win a golden star. I also like the way Princess Pearl is not a typical ‘damsel in distress’ and actually surrenders herself to Zog in order to help him win a golden star - again wonderful messages of female empowerment, kindness, and selflessness.
The rhymes in this book are absolutely superb. As you will read later in this review, I created a whole re-telling of the story using actions with my Year 1 class. Not only can I pretty much recite the whole story by heart now, but the 5/6 year olds in that class, after only 3 weeks, could remember every key line in the story - some of them even correcting me when I misremembered a rhyming pair.
This book (and the BBC One animated adaptation) inspired a whole term of English and Drama for my Year 1 class. I posed as Madam Dragon on their first day back after half term and told them all they were now attending 'Dragon School'. Week 1 of lessons I planned using Zog:
Lesson 1: I hosted a 'Book Talk' about the front cover. After discussions, all the children wrote down questions for Zog. Lesson 2: ‘Flying Lesson’ - I filmed all the children acting and then we watched the videos and described our flying styles as a class on a piece of sugar paper. Lesson 3: ‘Roaring Lesson’ - the children all had a chance to roar and then we described each child's roar as a class on sugar paper. Lesson 4: ‘Catching a Princess’ - I took all the children to the hall and we played 'catch the princess' (stuck in the mud). Some children were dragons and they had to catch the princesses. At the end of this lesson, I then handed each child a 'golden star' for their excellent work as 'dragons'. Lesson 5: To end the first week, we read the whole story for the first time and finished watching the film. We referred back to the questions from Lesson 1 to see if any of them had been answered.
Week 2 was all about re-telling the story:
- We recapped the story - Created a class story map - Class got into groups and came up with an action for each scene in the story. Volunteers then showed their actions to the class to remember the story. - We then created a whole class re-telling just using actions (which we later performed in a class assembly to the school). - The children then used their own story maps and had two lessons to re-tell the story in their own words in their Literacy books (I included an input on rhyming here - children to identify and match the rhymes from Zog) - Volunteers then read their re-telling aloud to the class (two read their stories aloud in the class assembly to the school).
Further weeks on Zog were then based around innovation - changing the story to be about different mythical creatures attending school. We also used 'Tell Me a Dragon' by Jackie Morris to design and describe our own dragons. ...more