Beatrix Potter's Naughty Animal Tales
IntroductionBeatrix Potter's charming animal stories are as popular
today as when they were published in the early 1900s, owing largely to Potter's
beautiful artwork and the simplicity of her characters and themes. By studying
Beatrix Potter's childhood and her artwork, students gain insight into the unusual,
solitary world of Victorian childhood and can compare/contrast it with their own
world to understand why Potter wrote such simple stories and why she wrote about
animals rather than people. Students can also learn the difference between an
author and an illustrator and practice some of the same artistic techniques used
by Potter to create masterpieces of their own. Guiding Questions:What
was Beatrix Potter's childhood like, and how does it compare to or contrast with
the students' lives? Where did Beatrix Potter get the inspiration for her animal
stories? What techniques did Beatrix Potter use to create her illustrations for
her books? What personality traits do Beatrix Potter's naughty animals possess?
What kinds of trouble do they get into and what kinds of resolutions do they find
for their problems? What lessons are taught in the outcomes of the naughty animal
stories? Learning ObjectivesAfter completing the lessons in this
unit, students will be able to: - Discuss Beatrix Potter's childhood,
artwork, pets, and stories
- Discuss aspects of Victorian childhood and
compare them to their own experiences
- Locate England on a map or globe
and identify important political, social, and cultural events and figures in Victorian
England
- Recognize the various story elements of selected stories including
their settings, characters, bad deeds, consequences, and outcomes
- Apply
Potter's themes to their own lives by writing about a time when they committed
a bad deed and learned something from it
- Write and illustrate a simple
naughty animal story using the story elements discussed in this lesson
Preparing
to Teach this Lesson - Review all the materials on the Victorian period
and decide which pages you can print out and copy for students and which information
you want to condense into handouts of your own:
World
of Peter Rabbit website contains information on Potter's childhood and artwork.
You might choose to condense some of this material into a handout for your students,
or you can use the Text
Resource link to print out a copy of the complete text. Below you will find
the lists of links to follow in order to reach each major source of information
used in this lesson: - World
of Peter Rabbit website
- Beatrix
Potter
- World
of Peter Rabbit website
- Download
and copy the stories for the students ahead of time. You might want to include
all of them in one packet. Also have copies of the story
chart, provided in pdf format, and the Coloring
1, Coloring
2, Find
the Rabbits, and Dot-to-Dot
pages from the Print
and Play section of Tom
Kitten's Playground, located in the Fun!
Area of the World
of Peter Rabbit website, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource
Internet Public Library, as well
as art materials students can use on hand for the lessons. **If you teach in a
laptop school, you can have students read the biographical information on Beatrix
Potter and her stories directly from the websites.
- Hang up a map of the
world or display a globe for locating Potter's homeland of England. You might
also want to display a map of England. A good website for online maps is Atlapedia
Online, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Internet
Public Library.
Suggested Activities1:
An Introduction to Victorian England 2: An Introduction
to Beatrix Potter's Life and Art 3: Elements of Beatrix
Potter's Naughty Animal Tales 4: Writing and Illustrating
a Story 1 Introduction
to Victorian England and Victorian Childhood Using a classroom world
map or globe, help students locate England. Explain that England, Scotland, Wales,
and Northern Ireland comprise the country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland. Use a Map
of the United Kingdom, located on Atlapedia
Online, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Internet
Public Library to identify the entity of England, pointing out that it is
not an individual country. As a class, brainstorm music, foods, writers,
sports, and books that come from the UK, and write them down. Some suggestions
are: the Beatles, fish and chips, William Shakespeare, rugby, cricket, Harry Potter
books, King Arthur, Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins, and
Beatrix Potter's books. Introduce students to basic political, social, and
cultural aspects of Victorian England using a timeline of figures and events such
as the Victorian Station
Timeline on the Victorian Station
website, accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource The
Victorian Web. Once you have gone over the timeline as a class, break
the students into small groups and give each group a printout of the timeline
along with an envelope with all of the timeline descriptions printed on slips
of paper. Ask them to organize the slips according to each item's place on the
timeline. To save time, the timeline descriptions are included in a printable
chart, available in pdf format. Next, hand out and go over the Qualities
of a Victorian Gentleman and the Qualities
of a Lady on the Victorian Station
website, accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource The
Victorian Web, and discuss these as a class. The students might need your
help defining some terms. When you have read through each list, ask the
students to summarize their observations, and display their responses on the board
or on a large sheet of paper. A point of interest you might include is the qualities
for women were focused more on how they looked than how they were and what they
did, while the qualities for men were focused on how men acted and behaved. Using
the following web pages, create a list of information to pass out to students
about childhood during the Victorian period. Break the class into small groups
or pairs and have them go over the information contained in The
Children of Victorian Parents, accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource
The Victorian Web, and Victorian
Childhood, accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed website Center
for the Liberal Arts. Have the groups answer the following questions:
- How did the lives of well-to-do children differ from the lives of poor children
during the Victorian period?
- What were some reasons why so many poor children
did not survive childhood?
- What kinds of low-quality foods were given
to poor children? What kinds of food did well-to-do children enjoy, especially
at parties?
- At what age could a child leave his or her family and work
full-time?
- Describe factory worker jobs for children and chimney-sweeping
jobs for children.
- What kind of activities did poor children engage in
during their free time? What kinds of activities did more well-to-do children
engage in?
- Who were some of the people who would look after well-to-do
children? Did anyone look after poor children?
After the groups have
answered the questions, have each group write a sentence or two summing up the
lives of lower- and upper-class children in Victorian times. 2
An Introduction to Beatrix Potter's Life and Art Part One Briefly
review the aspects of Victorian culture and childhood introduced in Lesson One,
and introduce Beatrix Potter as the topic for the next few days' activities. Using
a handout that condenses the information or a printout from the Beatrix
Potter Art
and Life
links on the World
of Peter Rabbit website, read as a class about Beatrix Potter's Victorian
childhood and ask students to answer the following questions: - What
was unusual about Beatrix Potter's relationship with her parents?
- Who
took care of Beatrix Potter as a child and educated her?
- What was Beatrix's
brother's name?
- What kinds of activities did Beatrix and her brother enjoy
on their vacations?
- Why did Beatrix and her brother keep so many pets?
- What
pets did they keep?
- Based on what you have learned about Beatrix Potter's
childhood, what reason can you give why she might have written her stories about
animals rather than people?
After reviewing the background material
on the Victorian period and discussing Beatrix Potter's childhood by going over
these questions with the class, ask the students to write a personal response
comparing Victorian childhood, and specifically Potter's life, to their own. What
do they think it would be like to see their parents very rarely? To have animals
for best friends? Part Two Next, read about Beatrix Potter's
artwork by following the second set of links listed under Preparing to Teach this
Lesson. Emphasize that Beatrix Potter is an "illustrator" who learned to draw
by observing and sketching her environment and that she most often did pencil
sketches and watercolor drawings. Take your students outside or on a field trip
to a park and allow them to sketch plants, animals, and insects. Students might
use their sketches later as illustrations for their own animal stories, just as
Potter sometimes based her stories on drawings she had completed. **When
you return to class, you might want to give students the opportunity to use watercolors
to enhance their sketches, as Beatrix Potter did. See the Extending the Lesson
section of this lesson plan for ideas about setting up learning centers for this
part of the lesson. **If possible, when reading about Potter's artwork,
view some examples of her drawings of plants, animals, and insects. Follow the
third set of links listed under Preparing to Teach this Lesson. This exercise
will work best if you have a computer and a digital projector, but if your students
use laptops they can view the pictures on their own. Your other option is to download
and print out several images on a color printer and have them transferred, in
color, to overhead transparency sheets. 3
Elements of Beatrix Potter's Naughty Animal Tales Read the following
stories as a class and fill out the story
chart, available in pdf format, together: "The
Tale of Peter Rabbit" on the website Kids'
Corner Featuring Peter Rabbit, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource
Internet Public Library; "The
Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit", located on the Electronic
Text Center, University of Virginia, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed
resource Center for the Liberal
Arts. Then, have the students read the following stories on their own
or in small groups and ask them to complete the story
chart for these stories: "The
Tale of Two Bad Mice", on the website Kids'
Corner Featuring Peter Rabbit, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource
Internet Public Library; "Squirrel
Nutkin", on the website Kids'
Corner Featuring Peter Rabbit, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource
Internet Public Library. After the students
have finished their story charts, discuss common traits of the naughty animal
characters as a class and ask the students what they think the moral of each story
is. Finally, ask the students to write about a time when they were naughty
but learned a lesson from what they did wrong. Ask them to describe what they
did and why they did it, what the consequences were, and what they learned from
the experience. 4 Writing
and Illustrating a Story Have students write and illustrate their
own naughty animal story! Give students a story-
planning chart, provided in pdf format, so that they can outline the important
elements of their stories before beginning to write. You might want to prearrange
booklets for each student. Remind students to plan where their illustrations will
go in their stories. **This is an excellent activity to do on a computer
or laptop, as students can type their stories and arrange both text and pictures
created in Paint or other programs. Extending the Lesson - Use
your school library or the Internet to research different aspects of Victorian
childhood, and have students create a comparison/contrast collage -- then and
now --using images copied from books and Internet resources and images from magazines.
Students can also draw scenes from Victorian childhood and their own childhood.
This would be an excellent small group activity.
- Watch excerpts of Disney's
Mary Poppins or read aloud to students from the book to illustrate aspects
of Victorian family life.
- Create learning centers to support the students'
study of Beatrix Potter and her work. You might set up an art center where students
can experiment with watercolors, a science center where students conduct insect/plant
observations and complete scientific drawings, and a listening center with headphones/audio
tapes of other Potter stories.
- Coordinate with your school's art teacher
to create a mural of Potter's life/tales. You might break the students into groups
that are each responsible for illustrating a part of her life or choosing important
figures from her works.
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