This is the story of Mr Gumpy’s Outing. Mr Gumpy and the animals go on a boat trip.

Talk to your child about the story. Did the animals behave? What did they do? What happens at the end of the story? Encourage your child to use the same vocabulary as is found in the story.

Today I’d like your children to remember the names of the animals in the story. Can they write a list of all the animals? (goat, calf, chickens, sheep, pig, dog, cat and rabbit) They should be able to sound out each animal name and have a good go at writing them independently. Ask them to write it out as a list, with one word on each line.

Ask your child to pick four animals from the story and write a sentence about them, saying what they did when they were on the boat. For example, ‘The goat kicked’. They could draw pictures to go with these sentences if they want to.

If you have toy animals, you could ask your child to use them to act out this story.