“The very helpful hedgehog” by Rosie Wellesley has made it on our core reading list over these past days. Little gosling loves hedgehogs (mostly the reason why we have the book in the first place) and it’s also a sweet, funny autumn story about making friends. One rainy, chilly Saturday morning it made a beautiful pairing for our sticker activity. 

Stickers are a huge hit with little gosling, although it takes some patience to have him think through what he places where, instead of just rushing to unstick and stick them wherever, just for the sheer pleasure of it :)))). His fine motor skills are slowly catching up; he’s getting better at this every time. He loved completing images of the natural world and he was so excited to see the hedgehogs… we had to do the hedgehogs :))) !! Then, we realised the mummy hedgehog had an apple stuck on its back, just like Isaac, in that book! Sooo, he couldn’t resist picking it up from the book bin – which he did at a very brisk pace :))). 

Isaac is a solitary hedgehog living under an apple tree. When one autumn day an apple falls from the tree and gets stuck on his back he desperately tries, to no avail, to get it off.. When a very chatty, apple loving donkey helps him out, he realises that, maybe, it’s not so bad after all, to make friends.. And that’s what he does. Little gosling excitedly anticipates the noises made by the falling apples and imitates what must have been little Isaac’s movements to see what got stuck to his back. And mummy just loves the donkey’s rumbling about different sorts of apples and all the tasty treats one can make with apples..yummmyyyy !!!