Stepping Into Fairy Tales

Stepping into The Three Little Pigs

Serving time in Pre-K is a sentence I've come to embrace because the students (and my coworkers) are very endearing.

And although I am not teaching the literacy skills I find most interesting - due to the age of the children - there are brilliant features ripe for exploration.

These include poems and nursery rhymes (for developing phonological awareness) and fairy tales (for building an understanding of narrative story structure and story elements).

Stepping into The Gingerbread Man

We've been teaching and learning about classic fairy tales and providing opportunities for our little ones to embody the characters through diverse media.

Our partnership with The Children's Museum of the Arts has resulted in the creation of a stop animation film using clay figures set against well-known fairy tales settings all made by 4-year-old hands.

Stepping into Little Red Riding Hood

We have story tables and SmartGames to push student thinking. There are cool costumes for the dress up center and figures for the block area.  We've made 3D houses, dictated and documented hilarious student retellings and have played, laughed and run around the room with these characters.

Stepping into Goldilocks and the Three Bears

They are all fun (and educational) activities but I am a little bit in love with their water-color drawings - mixed with photography - showing the children stepping into the shoes of the fairy tale characters.

Stepping into Goldilocks and the Three Bears

There is also a cool drawing of Hansel & Gretel with more on the way.  I can't wait to see what they do with Jack and the Beanstalk (one of my favorites!).