~And they lived happily ever after~
What makes a fairy tale?
Fairy tales often dazzle readers with enchanted forests, jaw-dropping castles, and other-worldly characters such as witches, giants, and fairy godmothers. Heros are also essential to the plot and can usually be described as 'questing' heroes like Prince Charming or 'victim' heroes like Belle from Beauty and the Beast or Hansel and Gretel.
Traditional stories such as fairy tales are ideal to utilize when teaching children because of their typical structure, predictable story lines, and concrete vocabulary. They lend themselves nicely to modeling predicting skills and learning about character traits. More importantly, there are many anthologies available, such as Allyn & Bacon Anthology of Traditional Literature by Judith v. Leehner, provide not only fairy tales, but identify cultural origins of many stories that will allow you to compare and contrast.
Activites that Enchant and Educate
Using Folktales by Eric K. Taylor offer a plethora of ideas and activities that include listening, reading, writing, language games, and developing text structure awareness. Here are just a few!
Draw or photocopy illustrations from the fairy tale to create a deck of cards. After reading, group children (and caregivers if for a library program) and sort the illustrations in order from beginning to end. For older children you can adapt this activity to allow them to illustrate cards and swap with a different group.
~ page 54
Divide a fairy tale into sections and mark each with a letter or number (A, B, C, D) and pass out the different sections to groups. Let each group read their piece of the story and discuss the characters, setting, etc. Jigsaw by having one person from each to create a new group. Have children retell their part of the story to decide how to order each section.
~ page 117