Fairy Tales, Aesop Fables & Nursery Rhymes

Introduce childhood memories with a good assortment of fables and fairy tales. These are meant to be read aloud to children. Reading aloud promotes listening and comprehension skills, it expands reading interest and will help self-reading by hearing an adult rendition. Follow-up with questions and activities.

• Aesop Fables & Nursery Rhymes
  
  • Set one day a week for fables, discuss the moral and talk about the situations with kids.
  • Set another day for nursery rhymes, discuss these as well and have children memorize one rhyme a month to recite back to you.
• Fairy Tales
  Create a weekly story time. Read the fable, ask questions, read a book with a similar subject interest and follow-up with a craft or activity.
  
  • Thumbelina
    
    • Have them imagine what they would see floating down the river.
    • What would the advantages be in being that small? What are the disadvantages?
    • Craft:  Make a walnut boat. Carefully pry walnuts open and take out the meat. Use a toothpick for a mast and a small piece of paper for a sail. Make predictions, will it float or sink.  Then try it out. Alternatively you can create a tiny fairy from modeling clay.
  • The Ugly Duckling
    
    • Discuss what other baby animals look different from the adult animal.
    • How will the child change as he/she grows.
    • Craft: Make a swan coin holder.  Using self hardening clay, sculpt a swan with a depression in its back to hold coins, marbles, etc.
  • The Three Little Pigs
    
    • Discuss the pros and cons of each pigs house.
    • Talk about home safety and strangers at the door.
    • Craft: Make the three houses from DLTK's Printable Crafts For Kids
  • Rapunzel
    
    • Craft: Cut out a castle turret from a file folder; cut out a window towards the top. Cut 20 (or so) 7 inch pieces of yellow yarn.  Tie them together at one end and tape to the window in the turret and let hang down. Braid the yarn and use a rubber band to hold the braid.
  • Goldilocks and the Three Bears
    
    • Craft: from DLTK Goldilocks TP Roll Craft, Papa Bear TP Roll Craft, Mama Bear TP Roll Craft, Baby Bear TP Roll Craft
  • Little Red Ridding Hood
    
    • Discuss safety rules.
    • Make a revised version with a different culture in mind. For example what would "Little Red Roja" have in her basket?  Enchiladas, chili peppers...
    • Craft: Toilet paper wolf.  Here is a template & instructions from DLTK's Printable Crafts For Kids
  • Toad and Diamonds
    
    • Discuss kindness and doing for others.
    • What do you think it would be like to have a diamond or a frog come out of your mouth whenever you talked?
    • Craft:  Make a frog. Paint a paper plate green, dry, fold plate in half. To make eyes, glue cotton balls on one side of the paper plate toward the middle. Cut out two small black circles. Glue black circles to the center of the cotton balls. For legs, cut out four long strips of green paper.  Fold each one accordion style and attach to body. For a tongue cut out a long strip of red construction paper, roll it around a pencil to make it curl and glue inside the frog mouth.
  • Snow White
    
    • Craft: from DLTK Snow White and the Dwarfs
• Miscellaneous
  
  • Discuss Tale VS Tail

Story Starters:Once upon a time in a dark forest lived a family of...
Long, long ago in a time when...
Once there was a man who liked...
In a faraway land, deep in a cave...

Story Prompts:Describe a castle.
Describe a dragon.

Recommended Books & Things: 

The Random House Children's' Treasury
After and extensive search this book has just about everything - fairy tales, Aesop, nursery rhymes and nonsense verses.