Green Career Education through Fairy Tales and Stories

  • Target group: Primary
  • Focus: Connecting with the world, Imagine and invent the world as you career
  • Activity: Educating
  • Form: Group
  • Duration: 45 minutes

A set of 3 complementary methods (workshop) introduces pupils to environmental career exploration through storytelling (reading a fairy tale connected to nature), identifying main skills and strengths of its heroes, discussing green jobs.

The duration is 2-3 lessons (each 45 minutes):

  • 1st lesson: community circle, reading a story, identifying green jobs
  • 2nd (and 3rd lesson): working with cards and drawing an own eco-job

Inspiration for the tool

Slovak innovation factory

Rationale: Why is this needed?

This method is needed because it helps children from an early age discover their skills and interest in nature-friendly careers, supporting their self-development and ecological thinking.

Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will be able to:

  • Connect their experiences in nature with green careers.
  • Identify the main skills of story heroes and relate them to real-world jobs.
  • Reflect on their own abilities and how they can contribute to nature and sustainability.

Resources needed

Suitable literature or fairy tales, Kiwi cards, Job cards, creative aids (colouring pencils, markers, pencils, scissors, cut-out pictures, glue, drawings)

Activities

Course of the activity:

  1. COMMUNITY CIRCLE on the topic: what do you like to do in nature? what is important in nature?
  2. READING A STORY/STORY WITH ECO-THEME: e.g. The Little Trees (book), The Kingdom of the Forest Guardians (animated fairy tale), Resources from Padlet (see above)
  3. WORKING WITH THE STORY: explaining and relating skills of the main characters to the children, brainstorming of eco-jobs

Examples of questions to find out the skills/questions of the main characters:

  • Which skills of the main characters intrigued you?
  • What jobs could they do with these skills?
  • What else?
  • Which of these professions help nature, animals, plants…?

Note: the collection of occupations of the main heroes can be stimulated by working with Kiwi cards: we spread pictures o the main heroes in the space and the children match the cards with the occupations that correspond to their skills listed in the previous conversation. Then discuss with the children which professions can be beneficial for nature, animals, plants.

Examples of questions to ascertain children’s skills/skills:

  • which of these skills do you have?
  • what would you like to have?
  • Which jobs are interesting for you?
  • Which of these jobs are beneficial to nature?

The collection of children’s occupations can be stimulated by working with cards (e.g. Kiwi, Jobbkort): we spread the cards in the space and the children choose the occupations they are most interested in. We then discuss with the children which professions can be beneficial for nature, animals, plants…

  1. CREATING YOUR OWN DREAM JOB CARD:
    1. we discuss with the children which eco-job is the most interesting for them right now
    2. prepare creative materials for the space (crayons, markers, papers, scissors, pictures, glue…)
    3. Invite the children to create their eco-occupation card, which is the most interesting for them right now
    4. after completing the picture, ask the children to write or draw on the left side of the picture the skills required for that occupation and on the right side of the picture the skill they would like to learn first

Reflections/Consolidation of learning

  1. REFLECTION: after a set of activities in a circle with the children, reflect using questions or emoticons

Examples of reflection questions:

  • which activity did you like the most? Why?
  • what interesting things did you learn?
  • what did you do best?
  • what profession would you like to try or get to know better?
  1. CONCLUSION: after the activities and reflection, the teacher has information on which eco-challenges the children were most interested in, which they would like to try, or which skills they would like to acquire (for their implementation). These are excellent starting points for planning further related/follow-up activities that support both the pupils’ further self-discovery and their exploration of the world of work.