The author of “The Box Girl,” a fairy tale about fear, and “Garbuska,” a fairy tale about the strength of parental love, was invited to the school by Marta Wójcik, the school coordinator of the nationwide programme promoting reading. The writer visited two classes. In class II c, she held “Garbuska workshops,” while class 5 b took part in an activity entitled “Where Does Fear Live?”
In the fifth-grade class, the children and their teacher Marzena Medyńska became acquainted with an excerpt from the fairy tale “The Box Girl” and talked very seriously about fears. The fairy tale itself was not frightening to them, and reading it prompted a very interesting discussion about what we are afraid of and why. The children discovered for themselves why they are afraid of clowns. These cheerful circus characters, who behave irrationally, sometimes fill children with fear instead of making them laugh.
“I don’t like people who you never know what they will do, and a clown is exactly like that. That can be frightening,” one of the girls explained, admitting that she had once watched a horror film featuring an evil clown.
After learning about the mechanisms of fear, the children were given an interesting art task. One person from each pair lay down on brown paper, while the others traced their outline. The “person” thus created was covered with drawings of fears. The children tattooed the figure with spiders, mice, clowns, fractures, drunks and… maths grades of one—the things they feared most. Each fear “lived” in a different part of the body.
This simple activity makes children realise that fears are born in our heads, while physical reactions are felt in different parts of the body—most often in the stomach, which can ache from fear, but also in sweaty palms, stiff legs or shivers running down the back when the danger is still invisible.
Although the workshops were about fear and anxiety, the children responded with bursts of laughter as they confronted this emotion. Following the principle that “fear has big eyes,” they looked boldly at their fears, minimising their importance.
The second-grade class taught by Katarzyna Fulczyńska reacted to the meeting with the characters from the fairy tale “Garbuska” with great enthusiasm and energy. The children listened with interest to the meanings of their names—one of the activities held during the meeting
The names of the characters in “Garbuska” were carefully chosen: the name Matylda means “brave and strong,” Karol means “peasant, man or king,” while Robert means “one who likes to shine.” The children therefore learned the meanings of their names, discussed whether they liked those meanings, whether they liked their names and whether they possessed the character traits suggested by their names.
In the second activity, everyone painted the colours of emotions. Colourful collages made up of the colours of love, anger, pride, shame and happiness were created on white sheets of paper. The children discovered how colourful the world of emotions is and how every emotion is necessary and important. They also talked about which emotions they disliked and which ones were very enjoyable. At the end of the meeting, each student received a Garbuska stamp for their notebook.
The fairy-tale author and guest thanks the school for the invitation and for the excellent organisation of the activities at Municipal School Complex No. 2. Thanks to the teachers’ commitment, the children were able to gain a great deal from the meetings, have fun, reflect on themselves and their emotions, and spend their time meaningfully while getting to know a new book.
