Christopher Nibble

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I thought this was a sweet / charming short story with a strong central message about the need to conserve / look after nature (food supplies, etc. This will enable us to link the activities into many different areas of the EYFS while still making it great fun for the children to join in.

Children can also create colorful dandelion landscapes using dandelion heads as paintbrushes, or wrapping paper with a dandelion pattern. Christopher Nibble is a cute story, with some collage embedded into the illustrations, about patience, environmental sustainability, and of course, the beauty of dandelions (which I mentioned my love for in an earlier book post). Christopher takes the dandelion to a hill and blows all the white seeds off and soon enough more dandelions start to grow. Charlotte Middleton has illustrated her witty, quirky story with charming collage illustrations and her guinea pigs are the most endearing, funky little characters you are ever likely to meet. At school, Charlotte loved drawing and would regularly illustrate her spelling and times tables test papers.Some of the children used paints to do this as well as finding petals and leaves to stick on to create some really lovely pictures. Discussion with the children about what Christopher should do will hopefully mirror his actual decision: to find out all he can about dandelions. Topsy Turvy Theatre have turned Christopher Nibble into magical life in this entertaining, humorous theatre show. You could use a conscience alley to explore for and against devouring the plant, and wider discussions with the children about truth and honesty will also present themselves.

Christopher Nibble by Charlotte Middleton is a wonderful topic book to use whilst teaching and learning about plants and growth in KS1.Draw a map of Dandeville, showing Christopher’s house, the library, Daisy Chain Hill and other places mentioned in the story.

Off the back of this story we decided that we would like to grow some vegetables and flowers at the nursery.No doubt someone in school will have a pet guinea pig at home who may like to come in and visit the children. When reading the book with the children it is the perfect time to start thinking about Christopher’s character and what they think he should do at this point. Christopher Nibble knows that crunch time has come when there’s just one dandelion left-but will this plucky little guinea pig have the flower power to save the day? Why not create an entire restaurant area in the classroom complete with table cloths, place settings, menus and a specials board?

This was a great opportunity for the children to use some tools as well as introducing them to the concept of following a set of instructions. Christopher Nibble knows that crunch time has come when there is just one dandelion left – but will this plucky little guinea pig have the flower power to save the day? The environmental theme can be further developed by using other books; Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker, One World by Michael Foreman and Sally and the Limpet by Simon James would be some of my favourites. Christopher is a guinea pig who likes dandelions, one day they ran out, he found one last one, waited and made sure to look after it until it was a dandelion clock then blew it on the top of a mountain so his village had dandelions again.She has worked alongside Pie Corbett to develop Talk for Writing in practice and deliver training to schools.