“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein
This is one of my all-time favorite quotes! I use that it often. My last blog post was about the importance of reading fairy tales to our children. We talked about how fairy tales help us teach the basics of story elements — setting, characters, and plot (rising action, climax, and resolution) as well as the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Once a child understands story elements, his ability to make predictions and comprehend other stories is enhanced. Today I am going to continue our discussion about fairy tales.
Have you ever wondered why reading a fairy tale is important? Fairy tales enrich a child’s imagination and creativity. A child learns many things when we read them books. From stories, a child can learn how to be a good person and also begin to realize how people can be bad or “evil”. Fairy tales show children how to handle problems. They learn from the characters in the stories as they make connections to their own lives, and consider what they would do if in the characters’ shoes. Even though fairy tales can be unrealistic, they still teach a universal lesson.
A great example of this is The Little Red Hen. What a great lesson this traditional story teaches about learning to be helpful and not to be lazy!
In addition, we learn about growing grain and explore how the grains then become bread that we eat. Guess what kind of “bread” the children wanted to make? Pizza dough! So we made dough and each child made their own little pizza. They loved it. When we finished, we went back and reread The Little Red Hen again and every single child said they would not be lazy and would help the Little Red Hen! See, we can use fairy tales to teach morals and lessons!
The “moral” to this lesson is… use fairy tales to teach morals and lessons. What can you learn from Goldilocks? How about Cinderella or Jack and the Beanstalk?
Enjoy the freebie! I would like to leave you with one final quote from Albert Einstein.
“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”
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| Pictures making our dough! |
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