Teach Children About Respect With A Fairy Tale and Clay Gems

Dora, from Blue Fish on a Bike, was looking for a way to teach her children about respect. When she was trying to come up with a creative way to do this and remembered an old fairy tale about a toad and diamond. She changed the fairy tale a little bit so her kids could understand and relate to it. She then came up with the idea of making gems out of clay to help remind them of the lessons the fairy tale taught.

You can find Dora’s version of the fairy tale along with directions for making the gems in this tutorial: Teach Children About Respect for Others With A Fairy Tale Retold and Making Clay Gems

Looking for more resources on Teaching respect? Check out these books.

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A Week of Dr. Seuss Inspired Art Projects

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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