Storylines

We read an adaptation of The Three Questions by Leo Tolstoy and I was very impressed at how well the children were able to grasp the themes about values and priorities. The three questions are:

1. When is the best time to do each thing?

2. Who are the most important people to work with?

3. What is the most important thing to do at all times?

We talked about why the little boy went back into the forest to rescue the baby panda without the mother panda asking him to rescue her child. These were some big themes that can be revisited for the rest of the semester.

Next I asked the children to explain to me what happened in their storyboards from the film they saw earlier this week at the SF film festival, The Dam Keeper. I practiced interviewing them about the storyline of the film, and then I filmed our interview.

After talking about the storyline of The Dam Keeper, we talked about characters in The Three Questions and characters in The Dam Keeper. The children each chose a favorite character from the film and made a clay figure of that character. One of the kids chose a horse (or possibly a pegasus unicorn) from the film, and one chose a pig. They both practiced writing the date on which they saw the film. We talked about what some of the character traits were for these characters and how the other characters related to them. According to one of the children the pig was nice and almost all of the other animals were mean to him.

I look forward to developing more story recalling skills with the children and learning to use money, addition and subtraction for selling cookies at Zack’s Café next week!