Twelve activities come with the set, built for teachers and for anyone who has ended up running something for a group of children on a wet afternoon.
They are not lesson plans in the formal sense. They are shapes: things that work with one fable, a room, and no preparation. Here is what they are, briefly, so you can see whether they suit you.
The circle-time four
Read and stop. One fable read aloud, then silence, then one question: what should the animal have done? The silence is the technique. Most adults fill it and lose everything.
The vote. Read the fable, then ask the room to decide whether the animal was wrong. Hands up. The children who vote against the moral are the ones paying attention, and they should be asked why, not corrected.
Sing it twice. The song, once for listening, once for joining. Covered properly in karaoke with a room full of children.
The other ending. In pairs, thirty seconds, invent a version where the animal behaves. Then hear three of them. They get sillier as they go and that is a feature.
The group work three
Act the fable. Four children, four verses, no props. Six minutes to prepare, two to perform. Works from five upwards and works best when nobody is allowed to speak, only move.
Sort the faults. The twenty-six words on cards, and the group puts them in order from "least bad" to "worst". There is no answer. The argument is the activity, and it goes on longer than you will believe.
Fault and virtue match. Faults on one table, virtues on the other, pair them up. Quieter, good for a group that has just been loud.
The quiet work five
Colour and name. A poster, and the child writes the letter and the word on it themselves.
The letter hunt. Find the letter of the week five times somewhere in the room. Ancient, effective, costs nothing.
Draw the moment before. Not the fable, the scene just before it starts. This one produces surprising work from children who normally produce very little.
Write two lines. For the sevens and eights. Two rhyming lines about the animal. Do not mention the word poetry.
The weekly wall. One poster a week, in a row, so by the end of the year the alphabet goes round the room and every child can point at one they did.
How to use twelve activities with twenty-six fables
You do not need a new activity every week. Pick three that suit your group and rotate them. Children like the shape being the same and the story being different, which is the opposite of what most adults assume.
One fable a week gets you through the alphabet in a school year with weeks to spare, which is not an accident.
What it costs a classroom
The set is $49.95 during the launch and one copy runs a whole class, because the songs, karaoke, games and colouring book are all downloads and the storybook is what you read from.
And if you have no budget at all, which describes a great many classrooms I have heard from, take the twenty-six colouring posters for free. No account, no email required beyond the download itself, and you may print them for as many children as you like.