KS: R & KS1
Year Group: Reception
Author(s): Lynley Dodd
This is a Home Learning Branch for Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy. These branches are designed to support home learners to access literature-based learning using a selection of books we love from Writing Roots. They include purposeful writing suggestions, links to the wider curriculum so that texts can be used across other subjects, key questions as well as spelling or phonics investigations.
A Writing Root is available for Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy.
Character description, writing in role, letters, leaflet
Alternative version narrative
Two+ weeks, 10+ sessions
Summer term 2
In this ten-session Writing Root, which we suggest will take 3 weeks to cover, the children set up and create labels for an Animal Shelter. Some cats and dogs arrive and the children help settle them before reading Hairy Maclary. They play Match the Mutt, create a Character Splat, research and write some facts about cats and then devise a story not dissimilar to Hairy Maclary but this time about a group of cats who are frightened away by Riptail Paw – a dog version of Scarface Claw, the menace of a cat who appears in Hairy Maclary.
Updated for the September 2021 Statutory EYFS Framework
Hairy Maclary goes off for a walk in town, followed by a few friends. All is uneventful until they meet Scarface Claw, the toughest tom in town, and run for home. The story is told by a brilliant, cumulative rhyming text and terrific pictures.
This book is a wonderful start to a series of books by the multi award-winning author and illustrator Lynley Dodd. These books, which are full of adventure, encourage children to enjoy poetic rhyme and rhythm in language. Children can also begin to love and learn about the different dogs they see in the story and in their community as well as talk about pets.
Dogs, pets, animals, cats, friendship, adventure
Date written: June 2017
View Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy Writing Root
