‘Reality and Make Believe - Past and Present’

The girls really enjoy the ‘Mrs Smith Bayes’ Bottomley’ stories that we tell them. 

The story we are telling at the moment begins “In 1904 fourteen little girls found some 

Norfolk Pine seeds that they dug into the garden. 

They were magic seeds and in the morning the seeds had 

grown into very, very, very tall trees …” 

We have used this story as inspiration for our drawing and writing. We presented the girls with the Norfolk Pine picture and asked them to add the rest of the story. You can see Mrs 

Smith Bayes Bottomley in each picture looking up at the clouds looking for the girls.

We have found it interesting that the story we told them about the girls planting the magic Norfolk Pine seeds, seems to have complicated their understandings of ‘the olden days’ and present time, 

of what is a made up story and what is reality.

As an example of this, when we asked the question;

“What do you think the trees have seen over all the years they have been 

growing at Diocesan?”

The girls answers included parts of the elements from the ‘Mrs Smith Bayes Bottomley’ story:

“They have seen the whole world ‘cause up high you can see 

the whole wide world just like on Mt St John”. Olivia

“Even the Netherlands… you climb up the tree, walking, walking along the clouds and jump off the clouds and then you're at the Netherlands”.  Tess

“It’s so high you’d even see castles”. Féline

“If you walk around the clouds you’d see castles with diamonds and gold”. Tess

“They would have seen water coming through the ground and worms”. Olivia

“… and lots of beetles and bugs”. Féline

It was the last two comments that had thought the girls might think about.

We will continue to encourage ideas about what the trees may have seen over the last 100 years.