Bob the Railway Dog is now published in America by Candlewick Press. Based on a true story, ‘Bob’ is written by Corinne Fenton and illustrated by my husband, Andrew McLean. The story is set in the early days of the Australian railroad. As legend has it Bob took advantage of the the new form of transport by ‘riding the rails’… ‘His favourite spot was on a Yankee engine or on the coal tender…’
Here is a link to a review at Creative Kids Tales
In the outback, before trains and…
…after
Sunday night. Just settling down to watch TV when the iPad started buzzing.
Hello?
Hello, Janna?
Oh! Hello Rory
Hello Janna. Is my Essendon footy jumper at your place?
Ahh, well, I think it might be. Let me go and look.
Hang on. It might take me a minute or two to find it.
Okay.
I went to the cupboard where I stash the clothes that get left behind for me to wash when the brothers come over. I pull out five pairs of trakkie daks – two Size 8s, two Size 6s, and one with a flying bat on each knee that looked about a size 4.
Then out tumbled five T-shirts.
There’s also a bag of too-small nappies, two packets of baby wipes, four bibs, one pair of pajama pants, nine pairs of socks, and any number of odd socks, and…
…an Essendon footy jumper.
Rory, are you there?
Yes.
I think I’ve found it. Is it sleeveless?
Umm…
Does it have KIA logo on the back?
Urr. It’s…
I think this is it. Do you need it straight away?
Yes
What do you need it for?
Tomorrow is hot dog day at school and we are allowed to wear our colours.
What are your colours?
Our footy team.
Oh, okay.
So, how are we going to do this?
You need it tomorrow do you?
Yes
I could bring it over in the morning before you go to school.
Oh, okay. What time?
What time do you leave for school?
We leave at 8.30.
Okay, I’ll be over there by 8.30.
Thanks, ‘bye.
‘Bye.
A few minutes later the iPad dinged with a message.
“Hi it’s Rory thank you so much for finding my jumper see you tomorrow I don’t know how to thank you send us another message to tell us what you want me to do.”
I messaged him back.
I’m happy to bring the jumper over – If you want to do something for me maybe you could do a drawing of the Queen Fairy to go with this story. See you tomorrow at 8.30. xx
This is the story I sent. It is one of many that I have collected over many years of teaching in a story-sharing preschool.
THE QUEEN FAIRY
By: Anon. Aged 5 years
She is wearing a crown.
She has golden teeth
In one hand she is holding her wand, and juggling water
With her other hand she is juggling the whole moon, which she has picked out of the sky
She changed the moon into the world because she didn’t want it to be light at night
All of the people wanted to be scared so they told her to do that
Then she took the sun out of the sky, so every night and day it was dark
The snake in the grass bit her because she took the moon away
It was a good snake and if you did something bad it bit you
It wasn’t long before the iPad dinged again. It was Rory sending a photo of his drawing…
…with the message:
is this ok for you
Perfect – thanks Rory
(The snake says, ‘You took the moon’).
Sorry for the poor quality of the reproduced drawing. I hope you get the idea how Tyler used the drawing to help process his thinking.
And there was the day Tyler asked me if he could ‘do a play’.
Sure, I’ll just go and get my writing book and a pen.
Tyler fetched a large sheet of drawing paper, and the red, blue, green, black, and pink markers. He placed these side-by-side on the table, and said:
Captain Planet gave some rings, with diamond rings, to little kids.
While I was writing Tyler started his drawing. Up in the top right hand corner of the paper he used the blue marker to draw Captain Planet. Then he started on the rings, which he placed on either side of Captain Planet, and as he drew he said,
A red diamond on it.
A pink diamond.
A blue diamond.
Now, there’s two more.
Now let’s see – green, I think.
Now, one more.
Blue – water.
Red is fire.
The pink one’s heart.
The green one’s …
I’ll just make up a name for green.
The Black one’s wind.
I’ll just call green, earth.
I need to draw the little kids.
Red is fire.
Now, what was the second one?
Heart Continue reading
Through shared reading children learn about reading before they can read.
Every day one of the children asks, ‘Can you read The Spooky Old Tree?’ The book is The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree, written and illustrated in 1978 by Stan and Jan Berenstain.
Three little bears.
One with a light.
One with a stick.
One with a rope.
A spooky old tree
Do they dare go into that spooky old tree?
They do. Every day the children dare themselves to go into this book. Inside the story they, and the bears, come face to face with threat and menace – a twisty old stair, a crocodile, a moving wall, a spooky old hall, and a great sleeping bear. Along the way, one by one, they lose the rope, the stick and the light. And they find the shivers.
Three little bears…
without a light,
without a stick,
without a rope.
And all with the shivers!
I watched you Jake, sitting with your friends at the making table, drawing, and making puppets and signs. You were talking about what happened when you all went camping over Easter. Do you remember, Rory and Jessica came bustling in from outside? Rory was looking for something and Jessica was close behind, asking him the same question, over and over.
‘But Rory, who’s the favourite girlfriend of them all?’
‘All of them.’
‘Who’s the favourite one?’ ‘
‘All of them.’
‘No, who’s the best one?’
And you said, ‘I think she means only one.’ Continue reading
Packed and ready to go, and waiting… too much furniture!
Twenty-Eight Boxes by Virginia Lowe John had already left our rural city for his new job in Melbourne. I waited with the toddler and my parents in the empty house. Everything packed and ready to go Food, nappies Nothing was left A moving van pulls up outside Driven five hundred miles from Melbourne and overnighted […]
Young children know how to use signs to get their message across .
One Monday morning, at the making table Euan very carefully placed a cork to the end of an icy pole stick and attached it with lots of sticky tape.
‘It’s a pipe,’ he said, as he put it in his mouth. When the other children saw it they all wanted one.
‘My dad smokes a pipe’, said Euan.
‘My Dad, and Grandpa, and Great Grandpa smoke a pipe!’ said his friend, Fred. Later, when I talked to Fred’s Mum, she said that none of them smoked at all – let alone a pipe. Fred had created a story by imagining these three close people were pipe-smokers, and he used them as characters in his story. Continue reading
Photo: Alex Moloney
One day Rory found this photo. He showed it to his Dad, Damon and said, ‘Dad’, tell me the story about this picture when I was a baby.’‘Well…’, said Damon, ‘…this day I gave you mashed pumpkin, peas and carrots for lunch.You ended up with food in your hair, between your toes, on your eyebrows, up your nose. We had to have a bath! Looks to me like your enjoying yourself’. ‘I am!’ said Rory.
