There's a dragon in the corridor...

Miss Sullivan arrived back to the classroom after lunch with a big parcel. It was addressed to her but she told us that inside it was a present for Otters class. We watched as she opened it and pulled out three new stories for carpet time. Underneath the brand new books was a very long and very crumpled piece of brown packing paper. Miss Sullivan was about to put it in the junk modelling box when Reese suddenly stopped her! ''We could make our own lion,'' he shouted out. Reese had remembered our Chinese New Year celebrations from this morning and made the link between the video we watched of the Chinese lion dance and this long, narrow piece of paper. ''If we flatten it out we can decorate it.'' Paige thought this was a brilliant idea...''yes, we can all fit underneath it.'' She noticed the length of the paper and compared it to the little lion head and fabric we danced beneath this morning. Only three people could dance underneath that costume.

Soon enough. all of the otters were thinking of ways to decorate the lion, it was spread out in the classroom before it was realised that perhaps it was too long and was causing some commotion to any children wanting to walk to another area of the classroom. Mateo decided it would be best decorated in the corridor. ''There's more space. It's long.''

As we were working together to decide which end should be the head and which end should be the tail something very strange happened. We didn't notice at first because we were so engrossed in creating our own lion. Infact, Miss Sullivan said that many of us looked up, spotted the strange visitor, and then got back to decorating without making any comments at all. It was Kerron who first noticed something a little odd. As she moved to add an eyelash to the lions eye she spotted a new visitor. It was a dragon. ''Oh, hello Mr Dragon.'' she kindly said.

Paige and Finlay heard Kerron's strange remark and noticed that the dragon visitor had a damaged wing. A passing Mrs Ewen commented that it was just like in 'How to train your dragon.''

We were very concerned that the dragon had been injured and quickly decided that it would be their job to keep him safe. Chloe and Faye patched up the wing with red tissue paper and gently told him not to worry, ''we will look after you.'' While the girls were tending to the wing Mateo and Lucas had found some polystyrene ' medicine; and were tempting the dragon to take a few in his mouth. Finlay was dabbing the dragon's tail and asking him to ''keep still, it wont hurt.'' All sorts of joining techniques were being used as the dragon was being patched up. Sellotape didn't stick very well so was put away in favour of the masking tape. The children soon realised that they could colour over the masking tape and heal the dragon completely. Faye was trying bandages and homemade plasters were stuck on with some very sticky double sided sticky tape. 

Jack and Samuel were very interested in finding out where the dragon came from. Samridi and Christopher said that he came from 'Dragonland'. We thought that perhaps this was a long way away. Mrs Gill was very excitedly fetched from the snackroom and she wondered if perhaps the dragon had heard and seen our loud dragon dancing this morning and wanted to meet us.

Lucas thought that maybe the tear in his wings were because he had flown too fast to get to us and had brushed past a bush. Meanwhile Jack found some 'blood' in the classroom and told us that he must've been hiding in there throughout the morning. Lucas scurried off to create a map so that we could find Dragonland, he thought it would be in fairytale land ''quite near to Room on the Broom.'' He came back with a paper aeroplane, ''if his wings don't heal he can fly back in my aeroplane. He has a map to follow now.''

We were desperate to share our exciting news with all of the adults in the school, so much so that three of us wrote to Mrs Scarisbrick to tell her about the 'Dragon Emergency.' Mrs Russell and Mrs Hird-Shaw heard about our unexpected visitor and listened to us problem solve and work together.

Kerron said that it was very lucky that the dragon had landed outside Otters classroom. ''He knows we work as a team...that's why.''

Miss Sullivan agreed with her and said how kind and caring we had been. The dragon is now resting atop of our creative area in the cosy woodland. He feels very at home. We wonder if he will still be there tomorrow?