It’s been another eventful week for me! On Wednesday 7th April I did an Author Takeover Day on the excellent website EYFSHome. Every Wednesday a different UK children’s author gets to read one of their books online to kids that subscribe to the website, and when I was approached by fellow author and EYFSHome Creative Learning Assistant Jude Lennon to take part I jumped at the chance!

EYFSHome provides a daily set of home schooling activities for 3- to 5-year-olds that are linked to the English Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) educational programmes. The activities are free and by subscribing to the site you will get reminders of the latest activities, events and news relating to EYFS learning. It’s a valuable resource for parents, grandparents, teachers and carers during the crucial early years of their children’s learning and development, and it was an honour for me to get involved for the day.

I started my Takeover Day off with a video of me reading my new picture book, One Night in Beartown, which, as the title suggests, is full of bears! Naturally, the theme for the rest of the session was bears, so the activities included illustrating your own favourite bear, re-creating a teddy bears’ picnic, doing maths using your teddies, and finally doing some research into the origins of Bear Mania, the festival in Congleton which is the basis of my book. There was also an opportunity to watch me read my debut picture book, Sarah’s Shadow.

Don’t worry if your child missed my Author Takeover Day. It’s still accessible along with all the other EFYSHome past events on their website. Here’s the direct link to mine: www.eyfshome.com/activities/one-night-in-bear-town