Primary School Stages Elf Murder Scene With Fake Blood Leaving Students 'Traumatized'

A school in Hyde, England, staged an elf "murder-mystery" Wednesday, leaving children “traumatized.” The Year-4 classroom was turned into a “crime scene” as part of a Christmas-themed writing exercise.

Students at Flowery Field Primary School arrived in the classroom to find fake blood on the tables and walls, a crime scene tape and a red outline on the floor where the elf “perished.”

The parents felt the students were traumatized by the activity with one of them even saying her daughter suffered nightmares.

“There was a crime scene in one of the classrooms. There was police tape and a table had been knocked over, and there were blood smeared on one of the tables. The idea was elf had been murdered by another elf. My daughter came home and she was absolutely traumatized,” she said.

“I’m not the only parent who felt like that. A lot of the kids in Year 4 were unsettled by it. I am very open with my children and I understand you can’t protect them from everything. But my child was very upset last night and had to sleep in my bed,” she added.

The head teacher, Ian Fell, told Metro that the students loved such “engaging and exciting” writing exercise.

“The children were all excited and they really did buy into it. One of the children said to me ‘I am definitely being a detective when I grow up.’ Of all of the 90 children who took part, none of them showed anything but full engagement,” she said.

“I have been a teacher for 30 years and this is, in my judgment, an appropriate, engaging and exciting thing that children aged eight and nine have done. They have been so up for it. I am really looking forward to see the quality of the outcomes. We are not trying to keep this a secret and we will be Tweeting about the rest of exercise today,” she added.

In a similar incident in 2015, school students were left "traumatized" after they were asked to research and discuss a child’s murder as part of their homework assignment in Staffordshire.

The students, aged 14 and 15, were asked to find an example of a child murder and tell the class the details including what had happened and why the child was killed as part of an activity.

"When I found out the class had been set this as homework I was mortified. It must have been upsetting to be asked to do this as part of a homework task. It isn't appropriate for youngsters barely in their teenage years to be analyzing brutal child murders. A lot of parents feel the same and could not believe this had happened. A couple of the girls were left traumatized by it,” a mother said, Express reported.