We chose a range of inspiring people to find out about – people from the past and present, people from different countries, people with different backgrounds, people with different challenges and people who are famous in different fields – science, music, sport, literature.

Children learnt about the author of these books – Isabel Sanchez Vegara – she wrote these books to teach children that famous people were all ‘little people’ once and that if you dream big and work hard, you can make a difference.

The children were also surprised to learn that each of these books has a different illustrator!

All the children had a good think about what their own dreams are and created their own book cover based on these…

It was so hard to decide which people to learn about as we are lucky enough to have a lot of these books in our school library. Each class had a different book each day and another one in assembly so they had plenty of people to be inspired by.

Olive and Jade class learnt about the fossil hunter Mary Anning.

Did you know that Mary discovered the first complete skeleton of a creature that lived in the time of the dinosaurs? She learnt all by herself about fossils, rocks and bones because only men were allowed to go to university to study.

The children loved making their own ammonites from clay.

           

In Sage, Teal and Emerald classes the children learnt about the author of The Ugly Duckling - Hans Christian Andersen – and how his style of writing was very different to that of modern day author Stan Lee who wrote comic books and created Spider-Man, The Hulk and Iron Man.                                                                                                                                                                              

        

Did you know that when Hans was a little boy his family was so poor they only had one book in the house? Imagine that! Hans loved the stories and characters in that book so much that he was inspired to write his own stories.

The Y2 children wrote the story of The Ugly Duckling in the style of Stan Lee…

All children enjoyed learning about Taylor Swift and how she had a hard time at school because other children didn’t like the same kind of music as her and made fun of her.  Despite this, she persevered with her dream and is now a famous singer and musician.

In Sage class they listened to some of her songs. They used the instruments to keep the beat and try ideas of their own. They had a pop concert with their instruments. They also did some music appreciation by painting to the music.

In Olive and Jade classes the children made shakers and then used them to sing and dance to 'Shake it Off’

          

Children in Y2 re-wrote some of the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake it Off’ and then performed them to the class.

           

  

The children enjoyed the books so much that some have been inspired to buy their own and learn more…

Illaria enjoyed learning about Jane Goodall and said ‘her story stayed with me all day and all night and I couldn’t believe she studied for 60 years.’ She has bought that book and one about Marie Curie.

Tilly does gymnastics so she was inspired to buy the book about Simone Biles and is deciding which other ones to borrow from the library.

Jimmy would like to read the book about Roald Dahl because he loves his stories, especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Watch this space for news about Art Week in the summer term when we will be creating corridor displays based on Little People Big Dreams.