The next morning the sun shone brightly. Station Road School glistened after the terrible storm. The playground looked like a scene out of The Cat in the Hat. Everything that went flying in the storm seemed to have ended up on the netball courts outside Room 28.
All the teachers, the teacher aides, the caretaker, the receptionist, the children and the principal were trying to clean up the gigantic mess. They found odd shoes, straw hats, washing lines, car bonnets, dog kennels (without the dogs in most cases), half-eaten pizzas, the delivery boy’s motorbike, surfboards, television aerials — the list went on and on. Soon the playground was full of little piles of weird and wonderful things.
Miss May was itching to get her class back to work.
“What a terrible mess,” sighed the principal.
“It could be worse,” laughed Miss May. “We could have ended up in outer space. Now that would be terrible! Dark and cold! Come on, Room 28.”
When Room 28 walked into class to start work they got a big surprise, for there on a cushion sat a beautiful cat. Next to the cat sat a little bowl.
“Today we have a new member of our class,” said Miss May, “and I want you to show him how we welcome new pupils. This is Sandy. He lives with me now, but during the day he is going to help us with our stories, and we are going to help him with his maths. But before we start work, I have one more word to write on the list of class rules.”
Next to water, fruit and vegetables Miss May wrote:
sardines
