After acting out his ‘Three Little Horses’ story, Finny was keen to turn it in to a book.

Resources

  • Three Little Pigs book
  • Pencil
  • Paper
  • Scanner
  • Printer
  • Scissors
  • Glue
  • Card

Method

To start with, Finny looked at the front cover of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. He talked about what the similarities and differences would be between the book and his book.

He decided he would illustrate his front cover once he had written his book.

Title

Finny decided that the first word of his title would be in black, like his first little horse.

Having examined the front cover of the book, he decided the words in the title all needed capital letters.

He then went back and shaded over the title so the words looked bold.

Before starting writing his story, Finny asked to watch back the first video from yesterday. He explained that the story he was writing might not be exactly the same as the story he had told, but that you often find that is the same with Julia Donaldson’s stories.

Once upon a time

He changed his lower case ‘w’ in to a capital letter and wrote the rest of ‘Wons’, before using a finger space.

Finny split ‘upon’ in to ‘up’ and ‘on’.

When he looked at his ‘on’, he decided it was too big, so resized it.

Finny is really working on is making sure his letters are the right size. He explained how he thought you would spell ‘time’.

Finny loves explaining the reasons for spelling words a particular way, as well as how tall each letter should be. This can make his writing slow going!

Again, he resized his ‘u’ and ‘r’ in horses.

Second paragraph

As always, I left Finny to spell the words phonetically. He’s only had one term in Reception, so the focus is on him writing for enjoyment. I’m far more interested in him being proud of his accomplishments, than I am in drilling him on spelling rules.

We took a break for tea time, but Finny was so absorbed in his story that afterwards he asked to keep going right up to bed time.

He chose some pictures from his story telling to include in his book.

Page 2

Straight after breakfast, Finny was back on it.

Finny explained why he had spelt the word ‘fire’ the way he had. He had drawn a line to show the split digraph. There is a post explaining split digraphs here.

He cut out his next couple of pictures

Page 3

Finny was working independently so I just popped in and out to see how he was getting on. Every now and again he would call me over proudly to show me that he knew how to spell a tricky word. Here he wanted to show me two more split digraphs.

Page 4

Finny decided to put a ruler above his top line, so that his writing would be the same size as all the other lines, rather than the size of a title. Once he’d written a few upper and lower case letters he was confident enough to carry on without the ruler.

He finished writing the story.

Front cover

Finn kept flipping between concentrating and grinning whilst he was illustrating his front cover.

Finished pages of the book

Making the books

Finny wanted to send books to his grandparents and two great grandfathers, so we scanned the pages in and printed them out. He and Cian were very excited seeing the pages come out of the printer.

He cut the pages to size, sticking his front covers on a piece of gold card.

He ordered the trimmed pages, then stapled them together. After putting the books in envelopes ready to post, Finny ran upstairs and proudly put his own copy of ‘The Three Little Horses’ on his bookshelf.

DfES Early Learning Goals (2017)

Physical development

ELG 04 – Moving and handling:

Children show good control and co-ordination in large and small movements. They handle equipment and tools effectively, including pencils for writing.

Literacy

ELG 09 – Reading:

Children read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.

ELG 10 – Writing:

Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are phonetically plausible.