Mothering Sunday

Sunday began with children giving their hand-made cards to their mums. Mothers were pleased with the beautiful designs created by their artistic sons or daughters.
Mrs Bell and Mrs Hunter gave David a card to say 'THANK YOU' for all his hard work towards making the weekend so successful. They did not stay for the workshops this morning as they had to go and see their own children for Mother's Day.

Today's sessions were making musical instruments and then playing them with the help of Mrs Pearson, Wil's mum who is one of the Year 1 teachers at William Shrewsbury School. As a KS1 music subject leader, she was very happy to help the children to become creative with music.

Dinner Party

After some peaceful games with Mrs Hunter, everybody went back to their rooms to prepare for dinner. The girls were looking forward to dressing up, the boys were looking forward to the food!
The ladies looked very grand and happy and didn't seem to be missing the rest of the family very much. A wonderful home-made tomato soup was served as starter before the main course of chicken with fresh vegetables. The children decided to sit with Mrs Hunter and Mrs Bell whilst the mums had a peaceful meal. Lemon meringue pie finished off the meal beautifully.

Pendrell Hall serve delicious food. For Mother's Day lunch, they are expecting over ninety people, thirty four of those will be the party from William Shrewsbury.

After the meal, we had 'Play your cards' right and 'How well do you know each other?'. It appeared that the children knew their mums better than the mothers knew their children! But it was only a bit of fun. These games were followed by the story reading. Each child read their own story starter to the audience, who were amazed by their ability to write and read in public. Well done, children.

Mrs Hunter read out the parents' imaginative story starter. They had used powerful adjectives and described the setting very well indeed! Mrs Hunter had used a beautiful, wooden, ornamental box as a starter for creative writing, whilst Mrs Bell has used a muddy, brown boot. The results were amazing! Well done, potential authors.

Afternoon sessions at Pendrell Hall

After dinner, Mrs Hunter took the adults for a creative writing activity whilst Mrs Bell worked with the children on Design and Technology. As it was Mother's Day the next day, we made lovely pop up cards as a surprise. Children enjoyed using a variety of resources to create excellent cards. An hour went by so quickly, we had to send a message to the adults - they were given permission to have a cup of tea. Joshua came back saying, "They are all worn out!"

Children next had the task of showing how they write a setting for an imaginative story. They wanted to go out in the woods to get more ideas. Good try, Lewis, but Mrs Hunter was having none of that! Despite a slow start, we had eight fantastic pieces of writing by the end. Mums with their new found skills were able to help their children. There was evidence of paired discussion and use of powerful language. The stories were read out in the evening to a spell-bound audience. Even Mrs Bell was speechless with the high standard of work produced by her class, and she knows how good they are!

After all that brain work, David suggested making kites and flying them. What fun we had! There was laughter all around as the children, followed by the adults had a race. Emilia's Nanny was grateful when Mrs Bell asked if she could do the race for her.

Workshops at Pendrell Hall

The day dawned with the children trying hard not to wake up Mrs Hunter and Mrs Bell, who had been heard giggling and 'quietly' creeping around very late the previous night! Feeling hungry, everyone arrived for breakfast at 8.30am. There was a delicious aroma of food in the dining room.

Breakfast over, it was down to the serious business of morning workshops, which began with a tour of the grounds. David was keen to share valuable information about the main building, which was built in 1860. The Gaskell family who lived in it all those years ago had seventeen servants to look after them!

The tour was very enjoyable. We learned lots of things about nature as well as the interesting history of the place. This led onto Mrs Hunter introducing the alphabet collage. Mums/grandma and children set with great enthusiasm, looking for items beginning with specific letters as well making a collection for the collage.

The collages were brilliant - each one different, but it was the working together and discussion that impressed the staff.


There was little time for a break before it was the next activity - the number trail. It was important to fit in as many areas of the curriculum as possible. David explained the tasks and set them off. Mrs Hunter helped by guiding children around, from a sunny spot in the beautiful gardens. Pupils and their adults were running around looking for clues and doing fun maths.

Lewis and his mum had to look hard for clues as some questions had more than one answer.

We were all very impressed with Emilia's Nanny, who was smiling as she tried to keep up with her grand daughter. It was soon lunchtime! We were hungry again by now, and tucked into a superb buffet. Mrs Hunter enjoyed her small slice of pudding! Some of us went for the slighter larger portions though.