Ideas for Fairytale Days
- Instead of simply reading fairytales from books, tell these tales through puppet shows. Gather a collection of puppets that resemble the characters in a fairytale that you are going to tell children about, or create your own puppets with paper and craft sticks, pieces of fabric or socks. Use a pre-fabricated puppet theater, or make one from a cardboard box. Use the puppets to tell the fairy tales; animate them and create different voices for different characters. Using puppets to tell these stories will bring the characters on the pages to life and have a greater impact on the audience.
- Invite children to dress up as characters from their favorite fairytale. Have children pick characters from fairytales they are familiar with, or offer them a list of characters from different fairytales and encourage them to dress up like the characters. Children may dress up as Cinderella, Tom Thumb, the Gingerbread Man or Rapunzel, for example. Ask them to share who they are dressed as, or read the stories that feature their characters. When dressed the part, children will feel as if they are part of the stories.
- Create the setting of fairytale. Use props to transform your classroom or a room in your home. Create the setting for the story you plan on reading -- a magical wood for Snow White or models of a stick, straw and brick house for "The Three Pigs". Use construction paper, butcher paper, wrapping paper tubes, fabric and other materials to create the setting. Upon entering the room, tell the children that they have entered the world of whichever fairytale you have based the room on.
- Make a fairytale come to life by engaging children in activities that relate to the story. For example, if you're reading the Gingerbread Man, have children go on a hunt for gingerbread cookies and allow them to eat the cookies on finding them. Invite the children to lie on mattresses (blankets spread out on the floor) with items hid underneath them when reading the "Princess and the Pea".
