The Giving Tree activities with 3 christmas economics lessons

My kiddos are in love with our fables and economics unit on life lessons right now!  This week we had so much fun kicking off the Christmas season with 3 days of The Giving Tree activities. You may not think of The Giving Tree as a fable, but it has almost all the same elements. It just wasn’t written hundreds of years ago…and the characters aren’t animals, but one is a tree, so??? 🙂

But Shel Silverstein knows how to weave a good life lesson into his stories, doesn’t he? So The Giving Tree always has a prominent place in my Fables Unit and I absolutely LOVE doing this one during Christmas!

Here’s a look at all of the economics and Christmas life lessons we packed into these 3 days of The Giving Tree activities.

Sequencing the Giving tree activities

On the first day, we read The Giving Tree.  We talked about the life lesson and posted it at the table group.

And then my first graders worked in partners to sequence the story with our sequencing cards during our reading time.

elements of a fable & the giving project

On the second day, we reread The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein, and focused on whether or not the story was a fable or not.  We used our fable anchor chart to record whether or not we saw the elements of a fable in The Giving Tree.

(You can find this anchor chart template here.)

Then, we talked about the life lesson again and made a list of the things the Giving Tree gave to the boy {apples, branches, trunk} and I reinforced that the giving made him happy.  Then, we talked about the fact that the tree gave things she already had….giving doesn’t have to mean buying things.

We brainstormed a list of things we can give that we already have…without spending money…

We chose two of those ideas {because we couldn’t agree on just one!!} to work on as a class giving project: cards for a nursing home and participating in our school’s canned food drive.  We will be working on cards later this week, but we started collecting cans on Wednesday!

To help my firsties understand how good it feels to give to others in need, we set a class goal for collecting canned foods!

Scarcity & Opportunity Cost

On the third day of The Giving Tree activities, we reread The Giving Tree.  We reviewed our economic terms goods, services, and resources that were first introduced during our Little Red Hen economics lessons.  

Then, I introduced some new economic terms: scarcity and opportunity cost.  We talked about the connections. (When resources are scarce, we have to make choices…which means we have an opportunity cost.)

We charted the scarce resources the tree gave to the boy (which we listed on Day 2). And then, we discussed the choices the boy made with each resource and the opportunity cost he gave up because of his choice. We charted each of those in the anchor chart below.

Finally, during our writing time, my first graders wrote about whether or not they agreed with the boy’s choices and why.

I love love LOVE this story during the Christmas season.  Even though it’s not a “Christmassy” story, it’s the perfect addition to our Life Lessons Unit during the holidays!  I love how it really brings out the true giving spirit in my firsties…and I’m quite sure they will meet their goal of 34 cans before Christmas Break!

Grab The Giving Tree activities or get the full 200+ page Life Lessons Unit with this plus many more fables and activities!