Fairy Tale Fever!

Well, last week in addition to insects, we were also studying fairy tales during reading. We had a literacy night a few weeks ago with the theme "Fairy Tale Fever" so I wanted to make sure my kids were exposed to different fairy tales and their elements. We read Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast...and many more! We found that the books I had were VERY different from the Disney versions. :) Especially the Little Mermaid....she was blonde (NOT a red-head) and named Melody (NOT Ariel) although she had a red-haired sister (to which my kids screamed OH! THERE'S ARIEL!) Also the ending was extremely lame....basically the sea witch was like umm..."Here's your voice back. No one is scared of me with your sweet princess voice." And they all lived happily ever after. Wow. A;-)

I used most of my activities from the Happily Ever After Unit from Primary Perspective . One of the first activities I did with the kids was have them write what they would wish for if they had a magic wand. Sadly I sent home their artwork before I could take pictures, but I thought I'd share a few of their wishes with you:

"I would wish for all the girls to be princesses and all the boys to be princes."

"I would wish to be turned into a squid." (This kid is OBSESSED with squids)

"I would turn myself into a fairy and fly with my friends."

"I would turn into a T-Rex and chase everyone."

I love how pretty much everyone wanted to turn into something else. It is absolutely HILARIOUS to watch them play in our pretend play center. They LOVE pretending to be doctors, cooks, moms, dads, kids, puppies, fire fighters, waiters, salesmen...or anything you can think of. I have a few future academy award winners on my hands.... :)

We also did a fairy tale journal everyday last week. We are still finishing them up this week. I wanted to share with you some of their art work though. It is SO precious.

We talked a lot about vocabulary that described different fairy tale characters especially when we discussed the difference between "good" and "bad" characters and how sometimes a character could do "good" and "bad" things. For this activity, my students got to pick a fairy tale character and draw them inside the frame. Around their drawing they copied words from a list to describe that character. The first drawing is Little Red Riding Hood and she was described as anxious, joyful, calm and playful. Red went through a roller coaster of emotions! The second drawing is Cinderella's fairy godmother. She was described as playful, joyful, calm and sweet.

After reading Beauty and the Beast, we talked about how most fairy tales start with a similar beginning of "Once upon a time..." I LOVED these two drawings. The one on the right is done by my little artist...he is SO talented. I mean check out those details! Is he really in kinder??

The kids loved my voices in the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Especially my troll voice. It was very scary. :) Hah! For this fairy tale we talked about how there are "good" characters and "bad characters". We also talked about how many fairy tales use the numbers 7 or 3. (7 dwarves, 3 pigs, 3 bears, etc.) I love this kid's drawing of the goats. Apparently these goats were multi-colored!

Here is a couple pages on the Little Mermaid. We talked about how fairy tales usually have wishes in them and the kids wrote that Melody wished to have legs. We also talked about how fairy tales often have royal characters. The kids wrote that Melody was a princess.

Hope you enjoyed seeing more of my kids work! We have just started our animal unit so There will be plenty more to share soon! Stay tuned!