The Lilac Forest
© languageisheartosay

Another Traditional Tale has been uploaded to TES. If you do not get your resources from TES, you can find the ‘long and short of it’ versions (as above) here. The original story – from a book of Old French Fairy Tales – is a very long text so it has been impossible to retain all the detail and nuance, particularly in the simple reading versions. Some of the more gory and/or old-fashioned ideas have been omitted or changed deliberately! The characters have been renamed as Blondie, Doe and Looker.

This particular tale links in very well with PSHE (Personal, social and health education) with its programme of learning opportunities and experiences that help young people grow and develop. Like many tales in the fairy tale genre, it provides discussion opportunities for positive and negative behaviours: love, jealousy, generosity, temptation, bribery, trust, betrayal, encouragement, endurance, disobedience, patience, wisdom and courage!

New Zealand writer Pip Harrison (who contributes the story to read aloud) tells me some schools in NZ have adopted The Virtues Programme. I found a NZ school site (thanks, Google!) that has a nice introduction to the Programme and its encouragement of courage, honour, justice, kindness and other virtues. http://www.franktonschool.ac.nz/the_virtues_programme.cfm