Chinese Zodiac

Third grade continued its celebration of Chinese New Year recently.  One of the stories we read in class was The Story of The Chinese Zodiac, a tale about how people have certain characteristics based on the year they were born.  According to the tale,  the Jade Emperor held a great race for all the animals of the land in order to tell the years apart.   The first twelve animals to finish the race had a year named after them.   Students enjoyed learning about the different characteristics of each animal and thinking about whether they were similar to their animal or not.  We wrote and shared examples that showed how we were or weren't like the animal assigned to our year.

We also started working on a puppet show to re-tell the story of the Chinese Zodiac.   There has been a lot of joy as we used our sewing skills from last year to make our puppets.  There was a tinge of nostalgia as students thought about the teddy bears they made last year in second grade.  Right now, third graders are thinking hard about how to get into the skin (or fur and feathers) of our animals and coming up with interesting dialogue for our characters.    We are working on writing a script that is full of action, and thinking about creative ways to portray our character.