The Little Red Hen

When my own kids were small I used to tell them to “remember the Little Red Hen,”  any time they needed some encouragement to cooperate or help with a job.  The timeless message of this fairy tale – that everyone needs to work together and help, makes it an essential story for Kindergarten!   I also thought it was important to expose my Kindergartners to classic stories like this.

There are so many versions of this story that are available at libraries and bookstores.  The main difference I found was the cast of characters.  The setting, problem and overall theme was usually the same.  There are a few copy-change books that have been published.  I used one called Who Will Help published by Creative Teaching Press, I bought it from a teacher’s store.

The theme was the same but it was a mouse who asked for help (if I remember right) and he was making applesauce instead of bread.  It was a great step by step story about the process from picking the apples to making applesauce!  It is really interesting to see if your children can make that text to text connection when you read a similar story.

Like most fairy tales, The Little Red Hen is great for acting out.  It was one of the stories that my class acted out for our end of the year program.  I tried to avoid stories with one main character because I didn’t want to have one child stand out as a star – so I took a little liberty and the main characters in my version were the hen and one of her chicks.

Here is the adaptation that I used to act out this story:

The Little Red Hen

I made headbands with pictures of the characters stapled to the front.  Usually I cut out the animals for the headbands, but these pictures would work just as well!
I would copy them onto cardstock – or glue them on with rubber cement (works great!).  Then I would ” bubble cut” around each character, and laminate it,  to make it stiff enough to stand up when stapled onto the headband.

Here are these pictures to print:

Hat pictures to copy

Here are pictures that you can use to sequence the story – or you can enlarge and color them to use when you are telling the story to your class.  You could also have the children write a caption for each picture to retell the story.

These pictures have a pig and duck instead of a cow and dog.  No problem!  It would be fun to make a class story using different animals!  Here they are to print:

sequencing pictures

Check out the post about the Three Billy Goats Gruff too – you might want to change the titles on those projects and ask your children to write about their favorite part of the story, or use the little booklet to sequence and write about it.

We had a big discussion about things that Kindergartners can do to help – both at school and at home.  The children made a cut and paste red hen, then they wrote about one way they could be helpful.  I loved doing craft projects like this with my class – they had to follow step by step directions to make the hens, and these projects gave them lots of great fine motor practice using scissors, tracers, etc.  Developing those fine motor skills really makes handwriting an easier process!

Here it is to print:

Writing

We always did a cooking project to go along with this story too!  Sometimes we made yeast rolls, other times we baked biscuits.  You could even buy frozen bread loaves and the children could form them into rolls.   You could make biscuits with Bisquick, or even just bake the refrigerated roll biscuits!  The important part of the cooking project is including all the children, and finding opportunities to ask “Who will help me …”

Here are some bread machine roll recipes (really yummy!) and the recipe I used for rolls made from scratch.

Bread machine rolls

roll recipe

So, the next time you are looking for a little help around your house, you might want to remind your own family of the little red hen!

The Three Little Pigs

Another favorite fairy tale that goes along with the farm unit is The Three Little Pigs.  I loved acting this story out so much that we included it in our end of the year program.  My husband cut out 3 house shapes from masonite, and some parents helped me decorate them to be the straw house, the stick house and the brick house.  They were large but light weight and the children could easily carry them and hold them.  They had a cut out window for the children to peek through.

I wrote a simplified script of the play that we used for the program.  The characters in this version were:

Mother pig

Straw pig

Stick pig

Brick pig

Peddler

Big Bad Wolf

Here is the script I used:

The Three Little Pigs

Here are the props I used when I told the story to my class.

Here is a reproducible that children can use to retell this story.

Here are pictures to sequence this story.

Here are printable versions:

3 Pigs printables

3 Pigs project

I made up a song for this story to the tune of 3 Blind Mice

Three little pigs, three little pigs

Each built a house, each built a house

The big bad wolf came and huffed and puffed

The straw and stick houses were not so tough

Only the brick house was strong enough

For three little pigs, three little pigs.

Three Billy Goats Gruff

My class always took a field trip to a nearby farm in the spring.  There are so many wonderful stories and activities that tie into a farm unit.  It’s also a great way to review characteristics of animals, living and non-living things, healthy food, and the jobs people do on a farm.

I loved to have my class act out stories, and there are several fairy tales featuring farm animals that are great for acting out.  Although there are only a few characters in the Three Billy Goats Gruff, I love the language that is used and it is really easy to sequence and retell.

When I introduce a fairy tale I often like to just tell it the first time, instead of reading it from a book.  I just feel like the children are so engaged when I am telling a story, and it is so easy for me to make eye contact when I am not reading.  Here are some props I used to retell this story.  They are double because they fold in half and stand up – that way kids all around the circle get a good view.

I got these pictures from this resource book:

You could easily use just one image and make a stick puppet or put a magnet or sand paper on the back to tell this as a magnet or flannelboard story.

When my children acted out the story – after hearing it a few times, we actually used a classroom table for the bridge, and they trip trapped over the top – on their hands and knees, with the “troll” hiding underneath!

We used these pictures as necklaces for the characters:

I had 3 sizes of stuffed animal goats, and a monster puppet that we used to retell this story sometimes too!  It’s fun to retell in lots of different ways.

These 4 pictures can be used to sequence the story, or to go along with an oral retelling.  I reduced the size of these pictures for a writing project.  The children cut the pictures out and glued them into a booklet in the correct order.  Then they wrote a sentence or two describing what was happening in that picture.

For example -

“The littlest Billy Goat Gruff went across the bridge.”

“The second Billy Goat told the troll to wait for his big brother.”

“The biggest Billy Goat Gruff pushed the troll into the water.”

“The goats went across the bridge and ate the green grass.”

I photocopied these two pages back to back, then cut them in half and stapled them to make a booklet numbered 1-4.

Each child also need one set of these pictures – there are 2 sets on each page.

I liked this project because it gave the children a chance to retell the story, and write sentences, but they didn’t have to create the idea this time.  It was fun to see which children added descriptive language like “trip trap” or “mean, ugly troll.”

Sometimes I just asked the children to write about their favorite part of the story instead of sequencing the parts.  I had lines at the bottom for the children to write, I left them off so you could add the type of lines your children are used to writing on.

Here are printable copies of the props and writing papers.  I hope you have fun acting out stories with your class – hey – you might make a great troll!

3 Billy Goats printables

3 Billy Goats favorite

More and More Retelling

By now I guess you have the idea that I really value retelling and acting out stories.  It gives children a great sense of story, helps them remember details, requires sequencing,  expands their vocabulary, provides kinesthetic experiences for children who learn best through moving, encourages children to be actively involved, and is a good way to  assess a child’s understanding of the story.

I already shared several books, along with the pictures I used for necklaces, headbands, or magnetic or flannelboard pictures.  Through clipart and the internet I know you all have good access to pictures that you can use to retell all kinds of stories.  I would just like to share more books that I have found work really well for retelling activities with children.

Someone Bigger is another great story to reinforce characters and act out.  It tells about a little boy and his Dad who are flying a kite, the boy wants to hold onto the kite but he keeps hearing that it needs to be someone bigger.  After a bunch of animals and people get pulled up into the sky, the little boy finally pulls them all down.  This would be great to compare with The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins.

This old favorite is great for the whole class to act out at the same time!   I love to have all the kids walking with their “toes pointing in” and “their toes pointing out.”  Also pretending to “smack” the snow covered tree.  There is so much fun language in this book!  It is great to review the idea of events in a story, one time my class listed and counted them – there were over 20 events!  After several rereadings I asked the children to draw and write about about 6 events in the story and we made a little Peter shape with their own photograph glued onto the red, pointed hat shape!  They used their Peter as a pointer as they retold the story!

This is another older book that has lots of great events to retell.  I made “costumes” for Harry out of brown paper grocery bags that showed how Harry got dirty, dirtier, dirtier still, and dirtiest of all.  It also is good to talk about setting – we made a few props to show the different places that Harry played, it was fun to act out.  When the class gets involved in this process it really makes a big difference in their remembering the story and retelling it.

Many years ago when my children were young we used to go to Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio.  For years they had a Berenstain Bear section of the park that gave the children a chance to re-enact this story.  Anyone else remember this?  So in my classroom I loved setting up an obstacle course where the children pretended to go out the window, down the tree, over the wall, under the bridge, etc.  I made construction paper trees, etc. and taped them onto chairs, we used 2 trash cans for between the rocks, went under a table for the bridge, I made a blue shape for the lake.  Then at the end when the bears go up Spook Hill I used a small 2 step ladder and put an owl stuffed animal at the top.

I had the children act this out in small groups (only the leader of each small group got to go up Spook Hill).  Then I typed up the story with one sentence on a page to make a class book.  Sometimes I added a few more events, like between the cars, over the railroad tracks, etc. to have enough pages for each child – or you could have 2 children work cooperatively to illustrate a page.  I gave each child a picture of Brother Bear run off on tan construction paper.  They drew the event and glued the bear on their page, then we put them all together for a class book.

Another great Don and Audrey Wood book is Silly Sally.  I took each child’s photograph standing with their legs apart and reaching up with their arms far apart.  I glued them onto this page:

Silly Sally

Upside down of course – so it looked like they were standing on their hands.  Each child decided how he would go into town – skipping, singing, running, rolling, etc.

I made this cover and put them all into another class book.

Title

In the fall we acted out 10 Apples Up on Top, by Theo LeSieg.  I asked one child to lie on the carpet and put a plastic apple on his head, and took his picture.  When you look at the photograph it looks almost like he is standing with the apple balanced there.  Then the next child had 2 apples, the next 3, etc.  After that we counted backward, I included 2 children with 0 apples up on top.  It is really fun to see how it looks like the child has 10 apples balanced on his head.  This is great practice for counting backward too!

At Halloween it is fun to read and act out The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams and Megan Lloyd.  Even without using any props it is fun for them to stomp, stomp; wiggle, wiggle, etc.  I liked to practice this with my class, and then read it again when parents came for our Halloween party.  I asked them all to participate, and always got a laugh when the children knew the actions and had to teach their parents.

It would be easy to bring in shoes, pants, shirt, etc. to act this out – or even use clipart pictures of the objects for the magnet or flannelboard.

Most Fairy Tales are naturally great stories to retell.  My class loved the Gingerbread Man, 3 Billy Goats Gruff (using a table for the bridge!), Hansel and Gretel, The 3 Pigs, and the Little Red Hen.  I fit these into our schedule through the year, some at holidays, some when we visited the farm, etc.  These stories have concrete beginning, middle and end; I often asked the children to draw and write about those parts.  Of course we talked about how many events happen in the middle of stories.

My husband helped me make great houses for the 3 Pigs.  He cut out masonite in a simple shape of a house, with a flat roof.  They were about 30 inches wide by 4 feet tall.  He cut a square window out near the top.  Then parents helped me decorate them – one was covered with tan felt, then raffia was glued on for the straw house.  The next was covered with dark brown felt and we hot glued sticks onto it.  The last one we painted red and drew lines to make the bricks.  These were light enough for the children to pick up and hold.  When we acted it out, the pig would hold the house, and kneel behind it – peeking through the window.  When the Wolf blew it down, they laid the house down and ran over to the next house (no wolf eating pigs!).  We used this reenactment as part of our end of the year program – very cute!

Six Crows by Leo Lionni was another good book for acting out.  It was a story of a farmer who was trying to crow wheat, and crows who kept eating it.  They began a battle that neither side could win, and finally learned it was best to try to share and get along.  It was a good lesson as well as a good story to play.

The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper was fun to act out too.  I made train cars the same way I made the cars we played with for our Transportation Unit, out of xerox paper boxes.  I retold the story by simplifying the script a bit and the children loved acting it out.  Here is the idea of how I made the cars, these were used for Driver’s training during our transportation study.

Sometimes we retold stories by drawing and writing instead of acting them out, or as a follow up to acting out.

One of my favorite stories for this was Haircuts for the Woolseys by Tomie de Paola (my favorite children’s author!)  This is a great spring story about a family of sheep who get sheared (haircuts) for the spring, and then it snows again and Grandma sheep solves the problem of them being too cold.  It is great for retelling the beginning, middle and end 0r characters, setting, problem and solution.  It is really fun to read if you live somewhere that often has this weather problem – one day of beautiful spring weather, the next another snow storm!

Here is a copy of the template I used for the children to retell the beginning, middle and end of Haircuts for the Woolseys.  Copy the two pages back to back and fold it in half to make a booklet.

Of course you could easily change the title of the book and use this template for retelling the beginning, middle and end of any story.  Depending on the time of year I sometimes made a larger box for drawing, and only one or two lines.  By later in the year most children were ready to phonetically write most of their ideas.

Here is a printable copy:

Haircuts for Woolseys

Eric Carle’s book – A House for Hermit Crab is another one we made a project to retell.  I made a simple crab shape and copied it on red paper, then a shell copied on tan or yellow.  The children cut and glued it together then drew and labeled all the ocean animals that the crab gathered.

Sometimes this was part of a book we made about the ocean, other times it was just a project on its own.

Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni was fun to follow up with a project where each child took a fish shape and used scrap paper to make it look like another animal or person.

Who Took the Farmer’s Hat by Joan Nodset was fun to act out using a big straw hat, then each child cut out a construction paper hat and drew their own idea of how the hat might be used by an animal.  You could ask them to retell how it was used in the story, or make up their own idea.

We loved acting out and remaking Mrs. Wishy Washy too!  There are so many others!

I hope this gives you a few new ideas to include sometime!

It’s Not Easy Being A Bunny!

This book by Marilyn Sadler was another great way to review characters.  It is a simple story of a bunny who did not like being a bunny, and tried out living with lots of different animals – in the end he decided it was best to be a bunny after all.  I liked reading and comparing this book to The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, by Carolyn Bailey.  The theme of the stories was the basically the same.  You could do a T-Chart or Venn Diagram for the comparison.

Again I copied a picture for each character in the book.  Sometimes the children wore them as a necklace as they acted out the story, sometimes I stapled them onto headbands.  If you want to use headbands for acting out stories someone gave me the suggestion of stapling a strip onto each side of the picture, but instead of stapling it together to fit around their head, use a paper clip – that way you can adjust the size for different children.  If head lice is a problem in your building you probably would never share headbands, and even putting a yarn string around their neck for a necklace might be risky.  The children could just hold the pictures.

I also sometimes put magnets on the back of pictures of the characters and let the children retell the story by placing them on a magnet board.

This story is fun because P.J. got into trouble when he tried living with all the different animals – that makes it fun to act out – the bird pretends to fly, the pig pretends to roll in the mud, etc.

Here are some of the pictures I used for the retelling:

Here are copies you could print:

Characters to copy

I reduced the size of these pictures and put them all onto one page.  I gave a copy to each child along with a long fan-folded strip of white paper, about 4 x 24 inches.  I asked them to glue the characters on in the order they came in the story, and to write and draw to show why P.J. decided he didn’t want to live with those animals.  For example, on the bird page they would phonetically write – “He couldn’t fly.” On the page with the beaver they might draw a log and write “He didn’t like to work,” etc.  I found that after reading it and acting it out a few times the children were able to do this pretty easily.  Sometimes I asked them to draw the animals, but there are a lot of them to remember.  In this story the particular order is really not important to the story, my goal was really just to help them retell the basic ideas.

This was one of those projects that took the children awhile to complete, and they worked on it well independently.  I often left the book out for them to refer to if they couldn’t remember a part – we talked about how big kids and adults go back and reread something if they don’t remember it.  While the children were busy working on this I was able to pull one at a time to do assessments or DRA.  Some children handle being interrupted during a project better than others, but if you don’t have a paraeducator you need to find ways to fit in these assessments, at the same time finding meaningful ways to keep the children busy.

When the children in my class completed anything they always brought it to me and read it.  If they knew they were not going to show it to me, some children would just stuff it into their mailbox.  But it was another challenge to sit and listen to each child read his/her writing.  Sometimes I had a few children read their work to each other, sometimes I had parent volunteers that could listen to them read their work.  Occasionally I just looked it over quickly with the child, then collected them to read later so I didn’t have a long line of children waiting to show their work to me.  Of course, you always have to be ready for what they will do next.   I often had them get out book baskets and read, or math manipulatives.

My kids enjoyed acting out this story so much that we sometimes included it in our end of the year program.

The Wind Blew

I used this Pat Hutchins book during our weather unit, it was great to reinforce events in a story.  In this particular book the order of the events is not really that important, but it is great for showing how a story can have a lot of things that happen between the beginning and the end.  I used footprints as a graphic to reinforce this idea – or a gameboard maze.

The main idea of this story was that the wind blew, and took all kinds of things up into the air, then at the end – they all got mixed up and fell back down.  My favorite way to act out this story was to bring in all the real items that were mentioned in this book.  I did make a letter and a kite, but for the rest I brought in a hat, flag, scarves, etc.

It’s hard to tell from this scan but I took a legal sized envelope and addressed it to my class – then I wrote a letter to them and glued it so it stuck out the top.

For the kite I took a piece of 9 x 12 construction paper, cut the 2 bottom corners off and folded back the top corners.  I taped them on the back.  My children each made one of these kites in the spring, and drew pictures of things they liked to do in spring, to go along with their writing about spring.   We taped crepe paper to the bottom point and glued on paper “bows.”

I wanted all the children in my class to be involved in the retelling so I cut enough light blue crepe paper strips for each child who would not hold one of the event items.

To act it out, each time we all said the words “the wind blew” the children holding the crepe paper strips would stand up – hold up their strips and spin around in a circle, then sit back down.

Then we would say – it blew the hat… and in between each item we repeated “the wind blew.”  It was fun to bring in and turn on a real fan too!

At the end all the children with the items were standing and they walked (with reminders) around each other to mix up, then they all sat down.

Sometimes I used these picture cards instead of bringing in all the items:

Sometimes I held up this card for ‘the wind blew’ and sometimes we used the crepe paper streamers along with the picture cards.

You could also use these cards to review and reinforce the story after acting it out.

I made a set of the items from Pellon non-fusible interfacing too, and I left these out at a center for the children to use to retell the story independently.

Of course you could easily use pictures with magnets for this too.

Here are copies of the pictures – sorry – I don’t have blacklines, just my colored pictures.

sequence pictures_0014

Of course this book was great to use to talk about the concept of wind, my children loved an old activity from AMES called Huff and Puff.  I put pieces of masking tape across the narrow width of a rectangle table, about 6 inches from each edge.   Then I gave the children an assortment of objects and a recording sheet.  They would place one item at the end of the table and blow on it – counting how many blows it takes to get to the other end of the table.  We used things like a tissue, a paper clip, a small pebble, a marble, a crayon, etc.  Then I encouraged the children to talk about what they noticed, why did some things take so much more effort to blow across the table?  It was fun, and one more way for children to experiment and gather and chart information!

The Napping House

This is one of those books that I think most of you already use and love:

I loved and used most of Don and Audrey Wood’s picture books.   There are so many great ones!

The Napping House is a wonderful book for sequencing – and also to reinforce the story element – characters.  It is a simple, repetitive story that children love to hear and act out.  I often used this book during our Healthy Me unit – when we talked about getting enough sleep at night.

Another great use for this book is to teach descriptive language – it is a super resource for a writing mini-lesson on describing words.  Audrey included great vocabulary by adding an adjective to each character:

snoring granny

dreaming child

dozing dog

snoozing cat

slumbering mouse

wakeful flea

The illustrations are wonderful too – and it usually takes more than one reading for the children to notice the change of the weather in the story.

This was so simple to act out- I asked the children to remember the characters of the story – as they recalled them, I passed out a necklace for each character.

I looked for clipart of a child that didn’t specifically look like a boy or a girl.

For the wakeful flea I used a hand puppet of an insect that I had  in my room.

I used different things for the “cozy bed.”  Sometimes I just put a strip of brown paper on the carpet, sometimes I used a balance beam.

As the whole class helped retell the story, the child wearing the necklace of the snoring granny laid on their back, on the floor next to the “bed.”

As we named each character through the story – that child laid down, side by side on the carpet until they were all lined up in a row.

The child chosen to be the wakeful flea gently “bit” the mouse – we usually had a discussion of appropriate “biting” in the story.  They went through the sequence waking up each of the characters.

This story was so quick to act out that we usually repeated it until every child had a chance to be one of the characters.

I also made characters for my flannelboard to retell this story.

For these characters I bought heavy weight, non-fusible interfacing (Pellon) from a fabric store – it is pretty cheap.  I just laid the Pellon over clipart pictures of the characters and traced them, then colored them with markers.  If you use non-permanent markers you might need to leave them out to dry overnight so the color doesn’t rub off.

I made a large flannelboard by covering a piece of masonite with a dark solid color of felt, and taped it on the back with duct tape.

I often made retelling props for my magnet board too – I just copied clipart (or sometimes xeroxed pictures from the book), then I usually mounted them on card stock or construction paper to make them more durable – then laminated them and added a small piece of magnetic tape.  In some classrooms there are metal cabinets or chalkboards that work great for magnetized pictures.  My husband made me a large magnet board by making a frame for a big piece of steel.

The children love to use this kind of prop at circle time to retell stories, and they are also great to leave out as a retelling center.  I know that it is a commitment to take the time to create these retelling props – but once you make them you keep and use them for years.  If you have a teaching partner it would be great for you to make props for different stories, and then share them!

In my district we had to assess reading levels using DRA2 -after each book the child read he/she had to retell the story to demonstrate their comprehension.  I found that my children were so comfortable with the whole idea of remembering and retelling stories when I made a point to include these activities often.

After acting out the story the children did an activity that gave me good information about how engaged they had been in our retelling, a peek at their phonetic spelling, and whether they attempted to remember the adjectives!

I copied this picture onto the bottom half of 9 x 12 light blue construction paper.

Then I folded the blue paper so it was 9 x 6, with the fold at the top, and the picture on the front.

Each child cut out a simple bed from a rectangle of brown construction paper and drew and labeled all the characters in the correct sequence.    It always amazed me that the children who didn’t remember all the characters didn’t usually look at the picture and figure it out!

Here are the masters if you are interested:

project

Characters

 

It’s Mine!

Leo Lionni’s picture books all contain wonderful stories, extended vocabulary, great illustrations and usually a very pertinent moral lesson.  I read lots of his books throughout the year.

It’s Mine is a great example of all of these qualities – it is the story of 3 “quarrelsome” frogs who could not get along – each of them claimed that their own personal space belonged just to themselves – one claimed the air, one claimed the land and one claimed the water.  This book fits in so well when you need to have some discussions about sharing and getting along, but it also fits into the science curriculum under air, land and water.  Best of all it has clear characters, easy to identify setting, specific problem and resolution; and a definite beginning, middle and end – that makes it a great story for retelling!

There are so many absolutely wonderful books – it has always been a problem for me!  I want to read them all to my class – and every year new, wonderful stories are published.  But I learned that rereading a story multiple times turns that book into a wonderful teaching tool.  I learned this when I began to experiment with Elizabeth Sulzby’s Kindergarten Literature Program that I used at the beginning of the year.  I found that when I read and reread a story it became part of our classroom culture.  I would hear children using the vocabulary from the book, referring to the characters and making connections between that story and others we read later.  Of course I couldn’t reread every book lots of times, but it was really worthwhile to do!

After I read It’s Mine! and we discussed it a bit we acted it out together.

I turned the story into a simple script – you don’t actually have to write it out all the time – but I did it for this book and it made reusing it every year very simple.

Here is I needed to act out the story:

I enlarged frog clipart and ran it off on green construction paper.  I made the pictures into necklaces – you could also staple them onto a headband.

I put an initial on each frog for Milton, Lydia and Rupert.  (Also reinforcing beginning sounds!)

I made the toad a bit bigger and ran it on tan paper.

For the air I cut out a large white cloud from construction paper.

For land I cut out a large tan oval, big enough for the children to step on.

For the water I cut out a shape with waves along the edge – also large.

For the rain that came down I cut strips of blue crepe streamers.

Several children could hold a streamer and make it “rain” in the story.

We usually acted out a story several times, if the children were really engaged and loving it I sometimes repeated it until each child had a turn to actively participate.  I always left the materials out for the children to use on their own later.

I did a follow up project for this story – the children wrote about how they would solve a problem, or ways they could share things – I would be specific and brainstorm ideas with the group.

Then they would make this frog – they would draw a picture to go with their writing on the tummy of the frog.

I cut a large piece of green paper in half for each child, traced a curve on the top (you might not need to do that) and glued a white paper onto it for the illustration.

For each child I cut 2 rectangle arms and a strip for a tongue – my paper cutter was my friend!!

The children cut the bottom of the green up the middle to make 2 legs, glued on the arms, cut out triangles, cut a white circle, then cut it in half for the eyes and bent the arms and legs.

I often put these on display with a heading – Kindergartners Can Solve Problems!  or We Know How to Share!

Here is a printable copy of the story.

It’s mine stuff_0005

It’s mine stuff_0006

I also came across some pictures of frog art projects I did with my classes.

Retelling The Three Bears

I already shared a book about the Three Bears that my children always made to retell the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but before we made that book we read and retold the story.  I used these props to tell the story to my class:

These were 2 sided, laminated pictures that stood up.  I used to sit on the carpet with the children at circle time and I put out these figures as I told the story to them.  They were always amazingly quiet when I told a story – they were great when I read to them too, but they were so engaged when I was telling a story.

The 3 Bears is a great story to introduce the story elements because it has very clear cut characters, setting, problem and solution.

 

When I told them the story I tried to give them the language they would use when they were acting it out.  I usually chose a few children and acted it out at circle time – I was the narrator and the children added in the dialogue.  After we acted it out once or twice the children started taking more ownership of the story.  Then I left out the story telling props for the children to use at free choice time.  I loved hearing them use the story vocabulary and great expression!

These were designed to be masks, but I punched holes and strung them to be worn as necklaces.

When we acted out this story I found 3 different sized bowls in the classroom – I think the smallest one was a margarine dish.  We also had 3 different sized chairs – the smallest was a light stool that was easy to tip over when it “broke.”  For the beds I took 3 colors of roll paper and cut them in 3 lengths – the longest for Papa Bear was about the height of the children.  I drew a very simple pillow on the end of each paper.  Then I taped all the papers on a wall so the children could stand against them when they were pretending to lie in bed.  For this story we usually just acted it out in the middle of our circle.  Sometimes I had all the children scoot back to leave a “stage” area in the front.

The children loved having a chance to be one of the characters and really took ownership of the story.  My favorite published book of The Three Bears was James Marshall’s book.  I loved how Papa Bear yelled “Patooey!” when his porridge was too hot!

We acted out and retold Little Red Ridinghood and the Three Little Pigs in very much the same way.  Starting out with familiar stories like these really helped the children feel confident taking on the roles.

Another important reason that I really believed in acting out stories was to help the children see other points of view.  All young children are very egocentric, but as they begin school they need to be able to have empathy and understanding of other children’s needs too.  Lots of behavior problems can result from a child who just doesn’t understand that his needs or wants don’t take precedence over everyone else’s.  We need to help children think about other people, other perspectives, other points of view.  Taking on a role as they do when they act out a story – or get involved in dramatic play – can really make a difference.

I will be sharing a few other stories that my classes liked to act out!

Retelling Stories

One of the best ways to tell how well a child understands a story is by asking them to retell it.  When we assess comprehension sometimes we ask kids to sequence important parts, draw or write the beginning, middle and end of the story – or list the story elements – characters, setting, problem, events and solution.  I loved encouraging the children to act out stories, which requires them to think through all the events and the order they happen.

I usually introduced the idea of acting out stories and retelling them with simple fairy tales.  These common stories are often already familiar to the children and that helps them feel confident taking on the roles and acting out the events.

I found some great books that I used often to make retelling props.

This book had masters of 2 sided, stand up props for many fairy tales, that I reproduced, colored and laminated.  I always read different versions of fairy tales but when I used props and just retold the story it really modeled for the children what retelling sounds like.  Sometimes I copied these for the children to make and take home to retell the stories too.

 

This book contains 6 pictures for each story.  They were very helpful for children to use as props to help themselves retell stories.  Just sequencing these pictures into the right order helped them think through the events.  Sometimes I had the children write a simple sentence for each event.  Other times I asked the children to draw their own pictures to retell the sequence of a story.

 

This book was another good resource for sequencing pictures, stick puppets, etc.  I used all of these books a lot, but I had them for years and I am not sure they are still available.

To introduce the idea of remembering the beginning, middle and end of a story I used pictures of an apple.   I cut out a construction paper apple – with a stem and leaf.  Then I made another one but cut out a jagged bite shape.  Then I cut out an apple core – with the same stem and leaf at the top.

I made up a silly story telling – I set out the 3 apples in mixed up order and told the children – first I took a bite out of an apple, then I picked it off the tree, then I ate it all up.  Of course they would chime in that my story did not make sense.  I played around and said – “Oh, I know!  I ate it all up, THEN I picked it off the tree, THEN I took the first bite.”  Finally the children would tell me the correct order.  We would have a discussion about how a story doesn’t make sense unless it is in the right order, and that most stories have a beginning, middle and end.

Sometimes I used clipart pictures of an apple, an apple with a bite removed, and a core – as symbols for the children to draw/write  the beginning, middle and end of a story.  At the beginning of the year I took dictation, if I did an activity like this later the children would write phonetically.

To introduce story elements I found and made up pictures to symbolize characters, setting, problem, events and resolution.   I put each of these pictures on a 9 x 6 paper and laminated them, so I could hold it up when we were talking about each story element.  I don’t have these cards now but I included these pictures in the post about narrative text features.

Story element clipart

As well as using them as a teaching tool about the story elements, I sometimes used them as a reminder of what I wanted the children to draw and write.

Retell master

Later in the year I provided lines for the children to write – this master does not have the clipart pictures because I cut and pasted them on – they were not on my computer, but I did still include the pictures as reminders for the children.

story elements

After the children gained confidence acting out and retelling simple fairy tales, I continued acting out and retelling stories all year.  The children loved taking on roles and acting out the stories, and it really helped them internalize and remember the sequence of events.  Before I asked the children to retell a story either orally or by drawing or writing, we always acted it out with some kind of props.  Sometimes we used the stand up figures, sometimes we used headbands or necklaces with characters for the children to act out the stories, sometimes we made stick puppets.

Acting out and retelling stories really helps children develop a sense of story, and also the idea that when we read we need to make meaning from the story.  The children use vocabulary from the story, gain confidence speaking, remember the sequence of events, but most of all they have lots of fun. All this practice retelling stories helps when the children write their own stories too!

I saved some of the retelling props I used for different stories and I will be sharing them soon!