National Poetry Day celebrates poetry across the UK. The theme in 2010 is HOME.

"Poetry is wordplay. It helps us to remember stories, from Jack and Jill all the way to the Odyssey. Children love rhymes and rhythms; but poetry also helps them to improve literacy, to articulating a story or argument, to deliver a punchline or a moral." www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk

To find out more about this day and for lesson plans visit www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk

Lost Traveller Story

In Hampshire, in the eighteenth century, a Mr William Davis was riding home when a heavy fog surrounded him, and in no time at all he found that he had lost his way.

Suddenly, he heard the bells from his church start to ring, so he followed the sound and arrived safely home.

Later on he worked out that he must have been only a few yards away from chalk pits, where the ground had been dug deeply. Had he gone any further, he would have been killed.

When Mr Davis died in 1754, he left some money in his will. The money was to pay the bellringers to ring the church bells at 6:30 a.m. and 7 p.m on 7th October every year, to help travellers find their direction should they get lost on the same night he had been lost.