Our fantastic possum magic day!

On Thursday the 7th of August, the Year One children had a wonderful experience of being a part of a Possum Magic day. For the last two weeks, the children have been immersed in this wonderful story of love, travel, Australian culture and of course magic!

The Year One children became investigators of the story exploring the way the book was written by the author Mem Fox, to the vocabulary that was used to describe what was happening to the characters. We used a variety of comprehension strategies to pull apart the text to really understand what it was about. We loved completing story maps (summarising), having whole class shared reading experiences with the book (using our prior knowledge), writing about a character from our point of view (making connections) and of course loved reading the book for pure enjoyment. The expression and voices the children began to use while reading, was definitely a highlight of the unit!

The children and I decided that because we had worked so hard, we wanted to celebrate by having a Possum Magic day, where the children would come dressed at little possums and we would eat all of the delicious food that was featured in the book. The children came to school so excited and bursting at the seams, they loved wearing their possum masks and some of them even came with tails!

We started the day with some fantastic activities! We did some magic paintings with Mrs. Hughes. The children loved using special drawing tools to draw some pictures and some people wrote some secret messages!

After looking at the vocabulary in the book, we found some of these words in a word search which Mrs. Hayhow helped us with. Some of the children were so clever that they were able to find words that were going backwards!

Mrs. Keast had her great cooking skills out again and the children each made a cupcake lamington using delicious chocolate icing, coconut and some special Possum Magic stars. There were a few sneaky fingers that made their way into the chocolate icing bowl, but the children loved making them!

You couldn't finish a day without pavlova and the children got to decorate their own pavlova using play dough. The girls were very delicate making beautiful strawberries and kiwi fruit to go on the top of their pavlova. The boys loved designing transformer Lego Chima to rule the top of their pavlova, a little different but certainly enjoyable!

After all of our wonderful activities it was time to eat the delicious feast!  In the story, Grandma Poss and Hush travel around Australia and visit a lot of places and eat lots of delicious food, trying to find out how to make Hush visible again.

They had...

Anzac biscuits in Adeliade
Mornay and Minties in Melbourne
Steak and Salad in Sydney
Pumpkin scones in Brisbane
Vegemite sandwiches in Darwin
Pavlova in Perth
and finally... lamingtons in Hobart.

The wonderful parents in our class did not disappoint! We certainly got spoilt with all the fantastic Australian food! We started with savoury food like all good possums do and then finished with the much sort after sweets! The children absolutely loved the whole day and I know for a fact a few possums even went to bed early that night!

Thank you so much for all the parents that went to the trouble of making tails, putting on noses and whiskers, finding the costumes and of course making the delicious food! A special mention to Mrs. Hayhow, Mrs. Kerr and Mrs. Hughes for all your help on the day!

We had an absolute ball!

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Prowse