I remember growing up and hearing tons of fairy tales. My parents read me these or gave me books that I could read on my own. Even in school, many of the stories that we learned to read were fairy tales.
When my husband and watched the movie Hook with Robin Williams, he was a little lost because he didn’t even know the story about Peter Pan. Just recently we watched the movie Peter Pan and he liked it better than Hook because it made more sense. I began to run down the list of all the fairy tales I remember and tried to see if he would recognize them but he hardly knew any of them. This made me think back about my own teaching career and how many times I thought students had contact with fairy tales. It shocked me to realize how little there was.
Now it seems like we are getting back to fairy tale times with the TV shows Grimm and Once Upon a Time. When we watch an episode, my husband asks me which fairy tale is being referenced. Then I have to give him a recap of the fairy tale as I remember it.
I wonder if society has realized that children need fairy tales. Pretend and make believe are important in a child’s development. Those were happy times for me and bring back many good memories.
Maybe we need to reintroduce them more in our curriculum. They are wonderful ways to teach reading. Many of the fairy tales even have great moral lessons to learn.
Do you use fairy tales in the classroom? Which ones do you use and why? Please share.
Image: 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45097561@N00/2483997193
1 comment:
I know that some parents refuse to let their children have contact with fairy tales because of religious reasons. I know that one series of math textbooks, Saxon, which tends to be preferred by homeschoolers, actually had issues because they used gnomes and fairies and all those characters you see in fairy tales in math problems.
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