What an exciting day for pre-school!
This week children have been doing the story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
They have been involved in a wide range of activities related to the story but today children arrived to find a letter from Snow White for them. The letter told them that the queen had left some apples in the garden at nursery and the dwarfs shouldn’t eat them. The children called me in excitedly to show me the letter. We talked about what they could do to help. The children suggested that they should go and find all the apples quickly, so off they raced to the garden. However on finding the apples there was an unplanned for surprise. Each apple had a letter on and when the children and teacher put the apples together they read the words ‘Snow white and Happy’
And the unplanned occurrence?
Some of the apples had teeth marks in and others had little bites taken from them. A surprised teacher and children try to guess what had happened. The children decided that the dwarfs had found the apples and taken a bite out of them before realising that the apples were from the wicked queen.
The truth of course was discovered when, at lunch time, staff chatted about the apple hunt. Toddler staff had to admit that they had taken the toddlers into the garden to play before the pre-schoolers had begun their hunt. A number of toddlers had found the apples and taken bites before staff could stop them. I much prefer the children’s explanation!
Fairy stories provide wonderful opportunities to teach literacy, maths and much more. We have used this opportunity to talk about being kind, what makes a friend and helping others. But we have been careful too to ensure that the story and activities were exciting but not scary, as they often are for small children. Getting the balance right in these things is crucial if children are to enjoy fairy stories.