This week’s theme:

Mysterious People: Roald Dahl

This week’s colouring in sheet:

Download and print this week’s colouring sheet here. This week Lorna has drawn a Giant Peach with room to add yourself to the picture. Can you spot these insects: earthworm, grasshopper, centipede, silk worm, glow worm, spider and ladybird?

Fact of the day:

Roald Dahl was a spy, an ace fighter pilot, a chocolate historian and a medical inventor. As a writer his extraordinary mission is to amaze, thrill and inspire.

Resources list:

Bits and bobs and recycling; paper/card, sticks/straws, selotape, Youtube; Paper, pens; mirror.

Activity 1:

Roald Dahl was an inventor as well as a writer, and he also wrote the screenplay for Chitty Bang Bang that featured the inventor ‘Caractacus Pott’.

Watch this animation about the inventor of ‘The Shirt Machine’; at about 1:07 minutes you can see all the bits and pieces that go into making an inventing machine. Using objects and bits collected from around your house and from your recycling, can you stick together a weird and wonderful inventing machine of your own? What will the machine create? Hot ice-cream for cold days? Never-ending coffee?

When the machine is working, what noises and actions does it make? Try clicking your tongue and swirling your hands to start it up, then chug and clap while it’s working, for example. What noise does the machine make if you raise your arms into the air or sit on the floor; what action does the machine make if you whisper or whistle?

Have a sing-&-dance-along to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

Activity 2:

Roald Dahl once worked as a spy, and also write the screenplay for the James Bond film ‘You Only Live Twice’. From cardboard or paper, try creating a disguise such as eyebrows and a moustache to create your secret identity (or you could print some out to stick onto sticks here, or here). Wearing your disguise can you quietly and stealthily walk through your house, ducking behind sofas and doorways to avoid being detected? Try doing it to a Bond theme song.

Activity 3:

Roald Dahl wrote about some wild and crazy characters with wonderful names. Check here to find out what your Roald Dahl name would be, using your initials. What does your new character look like? How do they behave? What are their habits? What would they wear? What would they say? How would they act? Draw, or create a simple hand puppet, stick puppet, finger puppet, or tube puppet of your character and share a photo of it with us! You can share it on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or send it to melanie@purplepatcharts.org and we’ll put it online for you!

You could even write a story about your character that you could act out using props!

Activity 4:

Dahl was famous for his inventive, playful use of language in his writing. He would invent new words by scribbling down words before swapping letters around. He didn’t always explain what his words meant, but people can work them out because they often sound like a word we know. For example, you know that something lickswishy and delumptious is good to eat, whereas something uckyslush, disgusterous or rotsome is most definitely not! Try saying all of these words out loud and come up with an action for each one.

Can you find any objects in your house that make the sounds of, or feels like something squishous, or something that squizzles, fizzlecrumps or fizzwiggles?

Try coming up with some of your own imaginary words and definitions; you could even put them into a song or come up with rhyming words!

Add-on Activity:

Roald Dahl once said, “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” What good things could you do today for yourself and for the people you live with? Try and spread some goodness by being helpful, saying kind words and showing people that you care. How do other people’s smiling faces make you feel? Look in the mirror and compliment yourself on something you see in yourself, do sunbeams start to shine from your face?