Yes, I took on the challenge of writing Fairy Tales with K/1 kiddos. This was a two week long process, during which I repeatedly had to say, "No, you cannot write the story of Frozen." What really made me want to pull my hair out was the fact that they were also practicing for the school talent show at that time. A group that consisted of half the class was singing "Let it Go," over and over and over again. And by singing I mean shouting, because they are 5 and 6 year olds. Nonetheless, we made it through, and the result was enough to make a momma (or a kindergarten teacher) proud.
The kiddos love to read fairy tales and watch the movies, but they weren't quite sure how to write one of their own. They all wanted to write Frozen or Tangled (Rapunzel). It was at this point that I realized I needed to really break this down and try to foster some creativity. We started by discussing what characteristics you find in a fairy tale. This handy little chart was a nice reference for the kids.
Next, we filled out graphic organizers to help us brainstorm. After they got started, I realized that we needed to do one together. Unfortunately, this resulted in several spin-offs of my story.
The next day we started our first drafts. I gave each student lined paper and they began writing their stories. This took a couple of days. The final step was turning them into books. I cut white paper in half to make smaller pages, and I showed them how to write a little bit on each page and then illustrate. We saved the coloring and the cover for last. This process took about a week. Some students took longer than others due to the length of their stories. Here are a few excerpts from their books.
This one was about a witch who put hexes on everything. She hexed the Dad's car and made it a toy car. I love how so many of the kiddos used speech bubbles!
This one was the longest book by far. I think it ended up being 20 pages! She included a character with no clothes on. I was a little leary of this idea but didn't want to squash her creativity, so I simply asked why the character didn't have clothes. Her response, "She grew up in nature, so she never had any clothes." That seemed logical to me, so I let her proceed, while I crossed my fingers that the illustrations would not reveal anything inappropriate. Here are a couple pages so you can see how it turned out (sorry they are blurry).
We had story time once all books were complete. They took turns sitting in my chair and reading to the class.
