Last week I ran a competition for the 10th anniversary celebration of the book How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers. Today I want to tell you a bit more about the book, and share the activities that we did, along with some free printables for you.
I always love knowing where a story or song had it’s origin, like Harry Potter which was purportedly conceived on a train on the way to King’s Cross Station, a station that plays a big part in the plot of the story. You may not know this about me, but I actually have a BA in Literature and Languages, with specialisation in Creative Writing, so the origin of a story is often as beautiful and exciting to me as the story itself is.
In the case of How To Catch A Star, Jeffers writes:
The story for this book began when I was sitting on the pier of a fish market eating
cheap shrimp and counting the star fish around the poles. I caught the reflection of
an early evening star in the water below, which immediately reminded me of an old
Brer Rabbit story, The Moon in the Mill Pond, and there on the spot, I made a single
drawing of someone physically trying to catch a star in my sketchbook.As I thought about how many variations there were of attempting this task, my
collection of drawings began to grow, and before long I realised I had the bones of
a picture book.
and so a story is born.
I finished my degree a year before having Ameli, and I guess I’m still waiting for my ‘moment’!
In the meantime, however, I get to read books and do activities around them, bringing stories to life through crafts and food with my own children. What a blessing.
How To Catch A Star is a story about a boy who wants a star, for his own ‘someone’ to play with. The book sees him climbing a tree, waiting for night time, hopping in his rocket ship, and all sorts of things, to try to reach the stars. In the end he does find a star – in the water, and him and his new friend go off into the future together.
It’s a lovely story that my children love. It teaches perseverance, and not giving up on your dreams. Just lovely.
Along with the review, we were given an activity pack for the children to complete.
The pack includes:
- Spot the difference
- 2 different mazes
- Templates to make puppets
- Dot to dot
- Make a mobile (2 sheets)
- Colouring in
You can print the pack out here for yourself, and enjoy the How to Catch a Star Activities.
I also found a whole teaching pack online, with 33-pages on teaching everything from maths to literacy from the story, with thanks to Blunderbus.
Of course, my girls never give up an opportunity for baking and making biscuits, and who am I to deny them – especially these gorgeous Lemon Butter Cookies. Yum yum. (Why lemon? Lemons are yellow. Stars are depicted as yellow. See what I did there?)
So… Literature to crafts and literature to food. How have you brought How to Catch a Star to life?
