Thinkeroo #4, March 2026

The 4th Thinkeroo event focused on animal adventures! Our students in the Young Learners 1 (YL1) & Young Learners 2 (YL2) classes followed Penny Hen & the little brown mouse as they got into all sorts of trouble.

In their reading circle, YL1 students, read the book Penny Hen Goes Away, by Jenny Dooley & Virginia Evans, Express Publishing.* Once upon a time, on a farm not that far away, Penny Hen was packing her bag, getting ready for a holiday trip. Wait a minute, she thought, what about my eggs? As you may very well know, you can’t pack them in a bag! Could her forest friends, Stella Squirrel, Tooty Owl, and Betty Butterly lend a hand perhaps? The book served as a starting point for our young learners’ reflections. What do they do when faced with a difficult problem?  To help Penny Hen out, they decided to create a safe space for her eggs, so that she could have a relaxing holiday! 

YL2 students’ reading circle formed around the book The Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler. Our story begins when a little brown mouse decided to take a stroll through the deep, dark wood. Without a care in the world he strolled until he realized that the animals in the forest, namely Fox, Owl, and Snake, saw him as a delicious treat. They tried to trap him in their respective homes, but our little brown mouse told them all about his (imaginary) friend, the Gruffalo! What’s a Gruffalo you ask? Well, a big and terrible creature! But when Gruffalo showed up unexpectedly, then… everybody ran for their lives. Βy the end of the story (no spoiler alerts needed!), our learners said that they would much rather be small and clever than big and scary. The little brown mouse lived happily ever after but our students’ imagination ran wild… as they decided to draw their own “Gruffalo” getting ready for a new adventure …

*Special Thanks to Express Publishing for supporting this Thinkeroo initiative!