Curiosity doesn’t kill the cat!

New Ideas with Ginnie & Pinney

Over the holiday period I realised I wanted to share how the Ginnie & Pinney materials can be used differently, so here are a few ideas which will hopefully broaden children’s learning and increase their curiosity.

The more we can stimulate children to be curious, the better. That old adage about curiosity killing the cat … well, I have a very curious and very old cat! Say no more!

Children who ask lots of questions are displaying their curiosity about the world. I think we need to respond to their curiosity in a positive way. I was often told, as a child, not to ask so many questions. We should never stunt children’s enquiry about their world by telling them they are asking too many questions.

Alice, in Alice in Wonderland exclaims ‘curioser and curioser’ when ‘things are becoming increasingly confounding’. Let’s ensure our children are curious and curiouser!

More ways to use Ginnie & Pinney

1.

‘Why would we spell Ginnie & Pinney differently?’ I was asked this a number of times. ‘It is a lesson in spelling and phonetics’, I would reply. If your children know the alphabet you could point out how ‘ey’ and ‘ie’ sound the same but are spelt differently. It might be fun to think of other words that sound the same but have different spelling. For example; would and wood, witch and which, etc. etc. Make a list of these and ask the children to draw the items adding the correct spelling to each.

2.

In Movie Mayhem, the words ‘crunch’, ‘squabble’ ‘screech’ and ‘scrape’ are onomatopoeic, meaning the word sounds like the action they describe. Ask the children to create a list of words that describes the word’s actions. Once you have a list, ask the children to act the words out, or make something that represents the sound. Here are some more examples of words that are onomatopoeic: ‘shush’, hiss, boom, whack, boing. And here is a link to a site with lots of onomatopoeic words: https://www.ereadingworksheets.com/figurative-language/poetic-devices/onomatopoeia-examples/

3.

In 3,2,1, Here I Come, Pinney and Miranda are counting down whilst playing Hide and Seek. This is a good opportunity to do some counting games. If playing Hide and Seek in a class full of children is not possible, a fun game is to have the children cover their eyes and count to ten whilst someone hides one to ten objects for them to find. Once the children have found the objects, remove them one by one, counting backwards.

4.

The Pinney the Winner story has a watermelon and spoon race. Is this possible? What can be balanced on a spoon? How big or heavy can an item be? How close to the item do you have to hold the spoon to balance it? Why? What happens if you use a bigger spoon? I think this is a very early beginning to a physics lesson.

There are many little hidden treasures in the Ginnie & Pinney books which I intend to add in further blog/s. So please stay tuned!

If you have any more ideas like this we would love to hear from you. Our hope is that we create an online group who could add tips and ideas centred around the Ginnie & Pinney materials.

Have a wonderful week and keep safe.

Until next time.

Penny Harris