The Snail and the Whale I Can Snails

As part of this year’s children’s mental health week’s topic of “Find Your Brave” we have been reading Julia Donadson’s The Snail and the Whale. We had in an activity earlier this week we had discussed when characters had been brave, in particular the snail. So for this activity I wanted to focus on times when we had been brave and emphasise how we are all at times very brave in our own ways.

Set Up

For this “Find your Brave” children’s activity I drew and then cut a simple sea snail shape on coloured card. I then wrote using a crayon “I can” on the snails foot. And that was all the set up that was required. I did also get out whilst we were doing the activity some white dotty stickers for the snails eye at the request of M.

They were both surprisingly excited to get started with this activity. We started by trying to talk about times when we had been brave. I also made sure to include my own experiences to model. Then they set about drawing on one side of the snail’s shells a picture of the time that they had been brave. With older children they could instead write their experience if they preferred. On the other side they then coloured in to make it look like the snail from the story.

This activity was a great way to discuss times that we had been brave and the snails themselves make a nice visual reminder to the children that they are brave at times too. Once M got started she kept thinking of more and more examples of times that she or her sister had been brave. It was nice to see her feeling confident about herself and her accomplishments. I like the fact that this simple children’s mental health awareness activity could also be easily adapted. Older children could write on their snails if they wanted and also think big snails would work for younger ones to paint on displayed in the classroom.