A Pipkin Of Pepper

Buy This Book * More books by Helen Cooper

Something was bubbling in the old white cabin. What was in the cooking pot? Pumpkin Soup.

Made by a Cat, a Squirrel and a Duck, waiting just for a pipkin of salt, to make it the best you ever tasted… But the salt jar smashes and there is none left for the Pumpkin Soup! Cat, Squirrel and Duck must go to the city to buy some more. Duck has the habit of wandering off but he promises not to get lost.

But not everything goes to plan…

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

English

• Read the original book, Pumpkin Soup. Can you think of a new sequel for the book?
• Write a recipe for pumpkin soup (see Resources below).
• Look at the use of speech marks in the story and use these to turn the book into a playscript. Could you then perform it to an audience?
• The author uses lots of different words instead of ‘said’. Can you find them all?
• Imagine that you travelled to the City in the story. What things will you see / hear / smell? (see Resources below)
• Look at the adverts for pepper in the illustrations. What are they persuading the animals to do? Can you make your own advert for pepper or something else?
• Rewrite the story in the form of a diary entry from the point of view of the insects in the illustrations.
• Find out about the jobs that members of the Police Force and Fire Brigade do. Could you plan an interview with some of them?

Maths

• The animals travel into the City on a bus. Can you find a bus timetable and work out the time for the next bus to different places. Can you work out how long some of the journeys take?
• Imagine that the animals visited different shops in the City. Can you think of some word problems based on the the things that they might buy and how much change they might get?
• Can you find any repeating patterns / tessellations in the illustrations?
• Think of different words that describe amounts of different things, e.g. grain, speckle, pipkin, packet. How much is each of these?

Science

• Can you make a list of different types of pepper? Where do they come from?

Computing

• There are lots of adverts for pepper in the illustrations. Use publishing software to design some posters to encourage people to buy pepper.
• Watch this video of the story being told. Could you record your own retelling of the story?

Design Technology

• Design a new house for Cat, Squirrel and Duck to live in.
• Find out how a pepper mill works.
• Design a new pepper mill for the animals to use.

Art

• Look at the illustrations of the city. How many different colours can you see? Can you name different shades of each colour?
• Draw some illustrations showing the wood where the animals live and the city. How are they similar / different?
• Draw a picture from the point of view of the Cat, Squirrel and Duck up in the helicopter.

Geography

• Draw a map to help Duck find his way home when he gets lost in the city.

PSHE

• Make a poster to tell people what to do if they ever get lost.

Downloads: