We have had an exciting start to our new inquiry (Letters help us organise our world) this week. The children arrived on Tuesday to discover some mysterious symbols on the carpet where we have our morning meetings. We mulled over what they could be. Someone suggested that they were numbers. Then another child recognised 'H' and 'p' and named them for us. I explained that they were letters, rather than numbers. I asked where we usually find letters, and the children pointed them out on books, on signs on the wall and on our whiteboard. We wondered what they were doing on our carpet. I explained that I hadn't put them there, and when we asked Ms Shirin, she also said she had no idea where they had come from. Since letters go together to make words, we wondered if we might be able to put them together to make some kind of message. We tried rearranging the three letters in different ways, and I read the results out to the children each time. We were unable to make any sense of them, but saying the silly-sounding nonsense words was very funny! We wondered if someone was trying to tell us something; to communicate with us. When I asked what we should do about the letters we had found, I received this response: "We need to be like detectives!" "Like Paw Patrol!" "We might need magnifying glasses!" Since we couldn't make sense of the message, I suggested we leave the letters up on the board, and that we all keep our eyes and ears open to anything unusual, in case we discovered any more clues. Of their own accord, several children found magnifiers and spent time looking closely at the lettering, and around the classroom, searching for anything that might tell us more about the mystery. We found nothing definitive, and wondered if we might find anything new the next day. The next morning, the children arrived very keen to immediately check to see if there was any sign of the mysterious visitor. They were extremely excited to discover that the visitor had indeed returned overnight, and once again appeared to have left some letters on the carpet for us. This time we found an m, an l and another e. We decided once again to try to shuffle the letters around and see if we could make any sense of them. We tried many different combinations of letters, which I sounded out each time, much to the hilarity of the children; "Hmmmm! 'Hep leno' Does that mean anything to you?" Now we were getting somewhere. We eventually managed to shuffle the letters around to spell 'Help'... It was a very exciting moment when we finally put the letters in a combination that made a meaningful message; "Help me"! But now we were even more confused. Who might have left us letters spelling out "Help me"? We discussed the possibilities as we saw them. The children came up with:
Once again the next morning the children were excited to run to check to see if we had had any more communication. They were initially disappointed to find that there were no large cut-out letters on the carpet. But then they discovered that there was a message after all, this time several sentences on one piece of paper. Even more intriguingly, there was what one child was certain was a bear 'footprint'! Now we had some more detailed communication: "Dear boys and girls, Thank you for your pictures. Will you be my friends?" The children wanted to know who was leaving us the messages. "How can find out?" one asked. I made a suggestion that we write a letter back, and ask our mystery visitor who she or he was. Together, we constructed a letter, which every child present in class signed. Now we were also introducing ourselves to our visitor. This morning we received a letter in response. Again there was a paw print on the letter. Now the children were convinced it was a bear. One child went to find the book 'Where's My Teddy' to point out the bear on the front cover (see below). I wondered aloud if the bear was big or small. After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that due to the small size of the paw-print, the bear must have small paws and therefore must be small. We read the letter. This time the mystery visitor introduced themselves, and asked for some help in finding drinking water... Finally, we knew that it was a teddy bear that was asking for our help, and that her name was Tilly. Tilly Teddy! We composed a letter dictated by the children and written by me, which said:
Dear Tilly, You can drink water in the kitchen. Yes, it is OK, you can play in our classroom. We are sending you a hug. Where are you from? Love from all the children in PS1H Today we will leave it on the carpet again for Tilly to find, and await her response after the weekend... What an exciting way to begin to consider what letters (of the alphabet) are, how they help us and what their value is! This weekend, it would be fantastic if you could find letters in your everyday lives. Examples might be found not only in books, but also on food packaging, computers, telephones, street signs and so on, and to notice and talk about them and their purpose with your child.
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