Our project for the Spring Term is ‘Traditional tales and fairy stories’
This project is always incredibly popular with Chrysalis children and gives us the whole realm of children’s literature and folklore to draw upon.
Why do young children enjoy a traditional story so much?
Apart from giving you some close one-on-one time with your child, these stories often have a moral underlying the tale which you and your child can talk about together. Ask questions about how the story made them feel, what did they think about the main characters and who they would most like to be in the tale. This gives your child great chances to express themselves which will help with their verbal development and communication skills.
Another thing with fairy tales that’s important, is the way they are passed down from generation to generation. It’s not just the process of reading a book, it’s storytelling, and one of the best ways of engaging children and sparking their imagination. Tradition helps fairy stories endure.
Children’s literature helps a young child make sense of what it is to be human and helps them understand the world around them. The fairy tale genre provides ways for children to receive important messages whilst entering a magical, but safe, realm of the story world.
They not only captivate the imagination of young minds, but also enhance their creativity and reasoning skills. A child learns a lot by simply listening to these amazing stories. But studies show that fairy stories and traditional tales bring significant positive results in the development of a young mind.
They are extremely important in developing the young child’s imagination. They show worldly common truths regarding humans and the world around them, in a simple manner. When listening to fairy tales, children are often deeply affected by their contents and, at the same time, their imagination develops and takes on new shapes.
Fairy tales, fables and other traditional stories from around the world teach us about society, class, relationships, emotions, values and even good and evil.
Folktales were often employed to share a common history, to reinforce cultural values or highlight important traditions.
As part of this term’s project we’ll be basing activities around some traditional tales and fairy stories including;
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears
- Anansi the Spider
- Red Riding Hood
- The Three Little Pigs
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The Three Billy Goats Gruff
- The Gingerbread Man
These are often stories that are already familiar to, and loved by, our children and we can easily cover all areas of learning included in the Early Years curriculum.
The project lends itself extremely well to role play and fancy dress, which children always love!
We will also be acting out the stories with props and hand puppets…
There will be lots of opportunities for small world imaginative play…
and of course, some amazing arts and crafts with a whole spectrum of different media!
If you have any well-loved stories at home that would make a good contribution to our project this term, please do let us know! Our little ones would be excited to welcome any parents or family members into nursery to read a story. Speak to a teacher if this is something you’d be interested in.
We’re looking forward to a magical story filled term ahead!
