More on Fairy Tales

Our fairy tale unit has come to an end. You can revisit the original post here:

                     http://musingsofateacher-beth.blogspot.com/2011/05/fairy-tales.html

I have to confess that this is one of my favorite units to teach!! I love fairy tales, the children aways get really into fairy tales and are always so entertained by various versions of one story. There are endless ways to engage children because there is something for everyone in fairy tale stories: beautiful princesses, heros, bad guys, magic, humor!

Before we bid adieu to fairy tales, I want to show off some of the creative work the students completed in the last few days of our unit:

In order to reinforce the characteristics in a fairy tale, children completed this activity. After a fairy tale read-aloud, children checked off which elements the story had and then wrote a sentence about what they thought the most important part of the story was.

The children LOVED the story of the Three Little Pigs (and we read several versions)! To get their creative juices flowing, I prompted them to write about the house they would build if they were one of the Little Pigs. Some went with the brick house, some made up their own ideas entirely!

The culmination of our fairy tale unit involved children writing their very own fairy tale. They had so much fun with this! I scaffolded the activity by providing a template for them to follow. See the examples below:

"The Prince and the Princess"

"Once upon a time, there was a princess, prince and a hourse that was a villain and he had a magic potion. And the hourse put a spell, and the horse put his finger out and the horse walked ove the the prince."

"There was a problem because the princess saw that the prince was on the ground."

"So to solve the problem, the Fairy Godmother came over to save the prince with her potion magic because it woke the prince up from the magic spell."

"And they all lived happily ever after!"

"Once upon a time there was a princess and she had a baby. Her baby girl grew up."

"There was a problem because a mean witch got a spell on the princess"

"So to solve the problem a prince kissed the girl."

Fairy Tales

Fairy tales used to be (and actually still are!!!) my favorite genre to read. Fairy tales often feature fairies or characters that have magical properties; goblins; elves; trolls; dwarves; giants; gnomes; and princesses, princes, kings and queens; fictional animals such as dragons, and animals that talk. Magic and enchantment is often incorporated into a fairy tale story. The story line in fairy tales are all virtually the same: there is a problem, which often revolves around a villain, and the problem needs to be solved, usually with the help of some magic.

I grew up watching the Disney channel, but it wasn't until I was older that I realized all fairy tale stories are much much older than Disney. As I got older I heard different versions of fairy tales I grew up enjoying. The best example to use is the story of Cinderella. Cultures all over the world tell the story of Cinderella, where the story line is the same, with similar characters. However, the setting, certain phrases, etc is catered to the particular culture. As a teacher, it is a goal of mine to broaden my students' exposure to fairy tales. Here are several examples of Cinderella around the world:

An Indonesian Cinderella Story

Mexican Cinderella

A Hmong Cinderella

Persian Cinderella

Caribbean Cinderella

A few other fine fairy tail twists, seen below, are Rapunzel, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Take a look at the differences between these two renditions:

And.......

Baby goats are called "Kids"!! Love it!

And......

The Inuit "Goldilocks", Aloo-ki.

Goldilocks

The traditional Papa Bear

Papa Bear dressed in original Inuit designed clothes. This bear family lives in an igloo!

Over the next few weeks, we will be reading lots of fairy tales (and different versions of most of them). There will be a variety of projects along the way to help children recognize and have fun with characteristics of fairy tales. The unit will culminate with each kindergartner writing their very own fairy tale. I am SO excited for this unit! The children always astound me with their creativity as they create their own fairy tales. Stay tuned....

After reading our first version of Cinderella, I asked the students to complete this worksheet during Writer's Workshop:

Identifying features of a fairy tale

We read a version of The Three Little Pigs this morning.

Then the children drew a picture and wrote about how they would make a sturdy house.