Fairy Tales

This week was the beginning of our Fairy Tale unit! We were on the look out for specific things that are found in fairy tales:  magic, talking animals, good/heroic characters and bad/evil characters, and happy endings. We started out by reading several versions of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and created our own beanstalk vines and giants. 

We discussed that the giant was the "bad" character in this fairy tale, but agreed that Jack was also wrong when he took things from the giant. We planted bean seeds in little "sprout houses" - we are hoping they are magic beans!

We wrote about our beans in our journals too.

Our next fairy tale was "Red Riding Hood". We read books that showed different endings, and were from different perspectives too. When we read "Red Riding Hood and the Sweet Little Wolf" we looked at things from the wolf's point of view. This is also an important social skill - understanding that two people can feel differently about the same thing. We watched several non-fiction videos about real wolves and learned that wolves do not really eat people!

We practiced the coping skill, "Count and Breathe" this week. This coping skill gives us time to calm down and process our reactions. We have also been talking a lot about the green zone - we want our students to really "feel" what that zone is like.