JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH by Roald Dahl

James is a little English boy  who had lived by the seaside with his beloved parents until they got eaten by an 'enormous angry rhino escaped from the London Zoo'.

He was sent to live with his two horrible aunts: Aunt Sponge, fat and lazy, and Aunt Spiker, bony and cruel. 

Their house was ramshackle, set on top of a high hill and surrounded by a big garden, where James was practically a prisoner for years.

He was absolutely alone and desperate when, one day, he ran away to the edge of the garden, and right there an old man gave him a bag with tiny green things that James was supposed to eat to finally end his miserable life. 

But he stumbled over the old peach tree's root, dropping the entire content of the bag that disappeared in a few seconds into the ground. 

The very next day something awesome happened: on the top of the old peach tree, that never had produced a single fruit, a peach suddenly appeared that, in less than one day, grew up and reached the volume of a house!

One night James found a hole in the skin of the massive fruit and… Enormous friendly insects and exciting adventures finally flew him toward a new happy life across the Ocean!

This book is worth to reading for at least  3 different reasons.

First of all, the story is founded on few basic Propp's functions that bring the young reader from an initial status of unhappiness of the hero (James) to an happy ending thanks to a magic gift given to him by a mentor. The hero makes new friends that will join and help him  through many adventures with characters like sharks and stormy Cloud-Men.  

You can also find many nice and funny rhymes in it and we all know how much important they are to developing reading skills and phonetics.

Finally it teaches children about insects: the Grasshopper, the Centipede, the Spider, the Earthworm, the Glow-worm, the Silkworm and the Ladybird.

They will discover who is useful to agriculture and who is a pest, why only certain kinds of grasshopper can play beautiful melodies, how many legs a centipede really has,  several uncorrected beliefs about them and much more! 

So enjoy the reading and, if you are a teacher, here you can find some really useful activities based on the book, designed by Nancy Polette:

http://www.nancypolette.com/handouts/guide_jamespeach.htm

Read more book reviews:

MOMO by Michael Ende

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS by Jules Verne

Lucy dedicates a lot of time and love to thinking about and writing the posts she shares with all of you. Because she believes that a better teaching is the key for a better future. If you find any help, value or joy in this blog, please consider becoming a supporting reader. A donation, in any amount, will be gratefully accepted. 

                                                   

MOMO by Michael Ende

When I was 10 I was shown a movie entitled 'Momo'. I remember there was this little orphan with an 'unruly mop of jet-black hair' and everything was kind of grey. I also remember that the film was about time.

Three good reasons to embrace the adventure of reading this book, written by the author of 'The Neverending Story', Michael Ende, and published for the first time in 1973 in Germany.

No-one knows Momo's age. She lives by herself in an little room under the ancient amphitheater at the edge of the city. She makes a lot of good friends because she knows how to listen to people and at the same time it seems that she helps them to improve the good side of themselves. Every day many inhabitants of the city spend a good time with her, either playing or chatting. 

But a grey shadow is planning to rule the city in a very different way. It's the Timesaving Bank and its men in grey. They want to steal people's time. They need it to exist. But 'time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart'.

So they convince everyone, little by little, not to waste their spare time. They want people to work as hard and fast as they can. No more chats, no more daydreams, no more love. 'All that matters in life is to climb the ladder of success, amount to something, own things.'

But Momo is different. She doesn't need anything. She only cares about her friends and the special moments they spend together.

One day she finds the doll 'Lola' waiting for her at the amphitheater. After her, a man in grey also appears. The particular doll can talk, but she only wants new outfits. That's why from the boot of the grey car of the man in grey, one after another, a huge quantity of doll's stuff starts to appear. Because 'There's always something left to wish for.'

Momo answers something about love to him and suddenly something unexpected happens. The man in gray feels a strong desire to tell her the truth about him and his organization. He keeps talking until he realizes that it 's the secrets of the Timesaving Bank that he was revealing. He stops and escapes from that uncommon little girl and  'like an explosion in reverse, all the dolls and their scattered belongings flew back into the boot.' This is one of the best scenes of the film, at the very moment I read the passage I could clearly see in my mind all this dresses and shoes flying back into the grey car.

Here you can see the Spanish version of the scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWYd-TabJdA&feature=related

After that many adventures entertain the young reader (and the old one).

I only would like to highlight some of the most illuminating passages in the book: concepts and ideas that are absolutely modern despite the book's age.

For example at some point of the story children are no longer allowed to play children's games in the streets. 'Child Depots' are built by the men in gray. There 'the youngsters can be moulded into useful and efficient members of society'. 

What kind of society they refer to is the question that immediately arises.

The answer lasts a line: 'A world dependent on computers and nuclear energy'. 

Does it ring a bell to someone out there?

Into Child Depots, kids, wearing grey uniforms, are taught how to play. The author describes a game like the 'data retrieval' where all of them pretend to be a card, each one carrying various bits of information about himself, sometimes they are just long strings of letters and numbers and so on. 'It's useful for the future'. They say.

It's impressive how time is stolen second by second from people who don't even notice that something is, slowly but inexorably, changing in their lives and the relationships among them. 

To be honest, I don't remember if I caught the meaning of these metaphors when I was 10. Probably not. Probably when you are 10 you just  don't like bad grey men and sympathize with Momo, feeling her pain of losing all her friends suddenly for some very bad reasons.

But probably for a child these strong emotions and surrealistic scenes are impressive enough. 

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES AND DRAMA

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L. M. Montgomery

This is an old book, written when dinner was at lunch time and lunch coincided with tea time. Uncommon vocabulary could generate some embarrassing moments for the teacher who has to explain its meaning, but it's really worth the effort, because 'lovely' and 'thrilling' are the two adjectives that will stay with you as you follow Anne around the landscapes of Prince Edward Island. Everything is "so romantic" and enjoyable. Everything is a gift to give thanks for.

Anne, who has got nothing but her imagination and her red hair, will tell you about the simple life and old-time education, but also about dreams and the strength of will to make them come true.

It was one of my favorite cartoons when I was a child. I suppose because kids can identify with the little girl who, like them, has to learn how to be a well-mannered child and wants to be an excellent student to make her parents (adoptive, in this case) very proud of her. 

Tiny garden - Pot labels

Do you have a little garden in your school?

So why don't allow your pupils to grow flowers and vegetables in it?

Even if you don't have space, and the only area you can use is the windowsill, few pots and a selection of seeds might improve the enthusiasm of those young learners.

Plants like radishes and lettuce grow very fast. Your students will be able to collect them after few weeks, with great satisfaction. 

Slower plants like charts, strawberries or tomatoes, otherwise, can teach them that there is the right time for everything. 

Decorate the pots with labels to remember which plant is in it and how to take care of its life. It could be a craft activity to teach them new vocabulary.

You can also teach 'responsibility' handing tasks out to each one (or to each group if they are very young).

Tiny Garden - Pot Labels

An example of simple labels that your kids can easily make. 

Cover them with a plastic film so you can avoid that water damages the drawings and the paper.

GARDEN SCRAPBOOK

This activity is suitable both if your school or house has a garden or even a little park in front of them. It consists of drawing or taking pictures of a part of the green area during the different seasons to observe how they change depending on the weather. 

Your kids can put leaves and flowers in it. You can provide them a seed catalogue, so that they can cut out pictures of the plants their seeds are going to grow into. 

They can draw, cut out and label every kind of wildlife they see. It will make the work even more exciting!

Here, an example!

These activities, apart from keeping the task of learning a little bit more participatory, also raise their awareness about the environment all around. That's the first very important step towards growing up to be sensitive human beings.

More 'green' stuff: THE LORAX by Dr Seuss
TINY GARDEN AND THE ERBARIUM

HERBARIUM

Introduce your pupils to the magical world of plants!

As we already well know they will enjoy doing some crafts, more than a boring explanation, so why don't make them start by exploring their gardens and taking notes on what they can see?

The first activity could be making a book, called an Herbarium, used in Botany to classify plants. They can pick flowers, dry them and stick them in this book made of sheets of heavy cardstock.

I personally prefer to leave plants where they are and take pictures of them, and so will some of your students, while others will enjoy a direct contact with the plants best.  

Here there is an example of my Herbarium made of pictures and drawings that your students can also do. 

It's a good exercise to improve their ability to pay attention!!!  

If they have a good level of English, they could find interesting a little research on the plant and write a summary of its most important characteristics. 

Here http://www.education.com/activity/article/Herbarium_Sheets/

is a page where you can find out how to make a traditional one.