A cake for all seasons...: Oh no it's a Gruffalo

Four years ago Rebecca started school, Sophie missed her sister and we were struggling with challenging behaviour from a bright two year old. I decided to re-visit the idea of sending her to playgroup. My search led me to Stanmore Baptist Church Playgroup, I liked it's style, the time they gave to the children and the genuine care that they showed. Sophie started mid-term and she loved it from the start, so much so that we abandoned plans to send her to the school nursery. She finished her two years and went onto school a confident and well adjusted child.

So it wasn't even up for discussion when it came to Annie - she couldn't wait and looked forward to playgroup days.

It is hard to believe how quickly the two years have passed. When I completed my Goldilocks story sack I took it into playgroup - they loved playing with it - so the idea of creating one for the playgroup as our parting gift was born. The story that they chose was the Gruffalo. It's a great story and lent itself to the story sack idea well.

The sack featured owls which fitted in with the story but was also bright and fun, the letters I printed out, then traced them onto 'Heat n Bond' iron on adhesive. Once ironed on to orange felt I could then cut out the felt letters and iron them on to the sack.

Three of the puppets were created from felt -I sketched out the image then used the sketch to cut out the pieces which were sewn together with blanket stitch.

The snake was created from a sock ( my husband now has 41/2 pairs of stripy socks!!) - I used cardboard to stiffen the mouth onto which was sewn a felt tongue. the eyes were created from circles of felt which were lightly stuffed to make them stand out.

I thought about creating the Gruffalo however was not convinced that I could reproduce a very specific character well so I purchased the soft toy.

The backdrop was challenging - mainly trying to keep it lying flat when attatching the trees - within the backdrop I created three pockets in the houses of the story characters so the puppets can return to their houses at the appropriate places in the story. With more time and more experience with my sewing machine - (we are not friends!!!) I would have liked to back it with cotton - maybe next time!

The flashcards are from a great site called Primary Treasure Box

There were a number of Gruffalo resources available. I chose sequencing cards as they were most useful for pre-schoolers but included some word flash cards and a pairs game.

I included some Gruffalo resources, a domino game, a snap game and the Gruffalo song cd which has great songs for a number of Julia Donaldson books - the 'squash and a squeeze' song however should never be played on a long journey - it's far too addictive and you end up singing it for weeks.