Half-Term Hijinks: Discovering The Menlove Treasure

This half term saw local children getting up close and personal to The Calder Stones in a reading of Frank Cottrell Boyce's brilliant tale The Menlove Treasure (available free online as a serial: http://cityofreaders.org/online-serial/).

After the children explored the old Calderstones Mansion House - the setting of the mysterious story - saw the giant safe and then The Calder Stones themselves, they sat and listened to the final chapter of The Menlove Treasure. In that chapter many questions are answered: Who moved the Calder Stones? What is the Curse of King Puck? Why has 10 year old Rylan’s mother disappeared?

Following that it was time to get messy by making their own Calder Stones or other items from the story. We had many different Calder Stone carvings, spirals, feet and even a lovely ladybird like the ones that were hibernating on the stones for the winter.

The children all had a great time and produced some brilliant dough sculptures which they could take home with them. It was brilliant fun to get so many young people engaged with the history of the Calder Stones - who knows, some of the future's budding archaeologists may have been in the room...