Year 3 & 4 Creative Arts Day: February 2007 - Each Peach Pear Plum

In collaboration with trainee teachers from Bath Spa University the children in Years 3 & 4 participated in a Creative Arts Day. Workshops were run in the morning around dance, drama, music and art. In the afternoon each class combined the efforts of all the groups and rehearsed and produced a performance.

The well-known children’s story ‘Each Peach Pear Plum’ was used as the starting point for each of the workshops.

The Text: Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s rhyming picture puzzle has been delighting children since 1978. A perfect book for reading aloud, the challenge is to spot in each picture the nursery rhyme character who is the subject of the next.

Dance

Children worked out motifs for different events in the story, such as Jack and Jill and the Wicked Witch.

Drama

Each group developed a different scenario from the book, with children taking on the characters. The children worked on their acting skills and using their voices.

Music

Children developed some of the characters in the book by coming up with descriptive words. This helped them create music to suit the character, which they did with a variety of percussion instruments.

Art

Props were made for the performance; these were mostly objects that could be used for spying as the story is about looking for the fairy tale characters.
‘Mother Hubbard down the cellar, I spy Cinderella!’

Performance

The final performance took place in the afternoon to an audience of Key Stage One and Reception children. Each class brought together the efforts of each workshop to create a performance telling part of Each Peach Pear Plum using drama, dance, music and the art work. All the children took part.