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By the time spring rolls around, our students have been hard at work for many months! They have learned so much and are eagerly looking forward to the summer. In fact, this eagerness can sometimes make it difficult for our young learners to focus on their work! One of my favorite ways to bring some extra engagement and motivation to the classroom is with fairy tales. In this post, I’m going to share some fun fairy tale activities for kindergarten that you can use in your classroom!
There are so many ways that fairy tales can bring a little bit of extra engagement and motivation to your classroom at any time of the school year. Here are a few of my favorite ways to have fun with fairy tales in kindergarten!
One of my favorite reasons to use fairy tales in the classroom is that it gives students an opportunity to compare and contrast stories. Since there are many different versions of fairy tales, students can listen to two (or more) different stories. After discussing the similarities and differences as a class, students can even record this discussion on a Venn diagram!
Whenever possible, it’s fun to use fractured fairy tales as one of the fairy tale versions. My favorite fractured fairy tales are those that tell the story from another character’s point of view. For example, when studying Little Red Riding Hood, you could read “Honestly, Red Riding Hood is Rotten!” by Trisha Speed Shaskan. Then, students can write about whose side of the story they believe.
Crafts are a great way to keep students engaged and motivated to practice a variety of skills. Students can practice following step-by-step directions as they also strengthen their fine motor skills with fun fairy tale crafts.
Students can review the sequence of a fairy tale with fun crafts! These 3D crafts all provide opportunities for students to record the sequence of events from different fairy tales. Students are always so excited to take their crafts home! Having the story sequence on the craft helps students retell the story to their families as they show off their hard work.
In addition to crafts, you can also have students complete story retelling activities to help them practice this important comprehension skill. Students can color and cut out characters from the story and place them on a story retelling mat.
Kindergarteners are always so excited to use their retelling crafts that they don’t even realize they’re practicing important skills! They are able to practice vocabulary, sequencing, and communication skills as they retell the important events from a fairy tale.
Fairy tales can often serve as fun inspiration for class books! After reading Little Red Riding Hood, students can write about what they would bring to Granny. They can even decorate their own picnic basket craft to serve as a lift-the-flap for their page.
After reading “The Little Red Hen” together as a class, students love to predict what the hen will bake next. This is another fun topic for a class book!
The best part of class books is that they provide students an opportunity to read what their peers have written. Plus, students are highly motivated to do their best work when they know it will be going in the class book for everyone to see.
Fairy tales provide many different opportunities for interesting discussions. You can often find ways to turn these discussions into opportunities for students to express their own opinions. You can even let students record their votes on a class graph!
For example, students can vote on whether they would rather have magic beans or money after reading “Jack and the Beanstalk”. After putting together the class graph, students can record and interpret this data on their own graphing worksheets.
In addition to graphing practice, there are many other ways that fairy tales can make math practice more engaging and fun!
Your students will love to practice nonstandard measurement as they compare the size of their hands and feet to those of the giant from “Jack and the Beanstalk”!
Students can also put together their own fairy tale castles with 2D shapes! In addition to practicing shape names and attributes, students can also practice counting and tallying as they record how many of each shape they have used for their castles.
In addition to the important comprehension skills we’ve already covered, there are other ways that you can make literacy practice more fun with fairy tales!
Fairy tale themed games are the perfect addition to literacy centers! For example, students can practice a variety of literacy skills like letter sounds and sight words as they make their way to Grandmother’s house.
Students can also practice sight words as they pull Jack’s magic beans from a bag! They can also make a pizza like Little Red Hen with sight word pepperoni.
Fairy tales also provide lots of engaging writing prompts! Students are always eager to write about whether or not they would share if they were the Little Red Hen.
If you would like to use fairy tales to bring some extra engagement to your classroom this spring, I have made it easy to do just that! I’ve put together three of my favorite fairy tale thematic units into one money-saving bundle. It is full of fun fairy tale activities that you can use to keep your students motivated to practice literacy and math skills through the end of the school year. You can find this bundle in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT. (You’ll also find links to the individual thematic units if you don’t need the full bundle.)
Are you short on time? Be sure to save this post so you can easily find it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite teaching board on Pinterest. You’ll be ready to download and print these fun fairy tale activities whenever you need them!
These alphabet books will have students dive deep into learning about each letter of the alphabet while eager to see what activity they get to complete next!
