Fairy Tale Project: Puss in Boots

July's fairy tale project centered on Puss in Boots. The Kid loved this story so much that even though I only meant for her to choose about 3 of the versions I picked up from the library, she read all 5! Here are the versions we read:

• Puss in Boots translated by Malcolm Arthur, illustrated by Fred Marcellino
• Puss in Boots retold and illustrated by Steve Light
• Puss in Boots retold and illustrated by Paul Galdone
• Puss in Boots retold and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
• Puss in Cowboy Boots by Jan Huling and Phil Huling

I note that there is a DreamWorks movie named Puss in Boots. However, that character of Puss isn't really related to the classic story but rather a prequel to the Shrek movies. I my daughter wasn't so very sensitive to violence in movies, we probably would have watched it anyway!

She would talk about even small differences between versions, like which title Puss gave his master. We spent a lot of time appreciating the illustrations in the books - I especially liked Fred Marcellino's and The Kid was especially drawn to the swirls in Steve Light's. By the time we got to the narration, she had to spread it out over two sessions because she gave such a detailed account of the story.

The skill I chose to work on with her for this narrative was chunking a story into "parts". Because she gave such a detailed retelling, I asked if she wanted to do multiple illustrations and make a full Puss in Boots book of her own. She did, so then we talked about dividing up her narrative onto separate pages, one "chunk" of related narrative for each picture - kind of like the forerunner to understanding dividing a long story into chapters. Along with this, we discussed how stories are set up, the action builds, there is a climax, and then things are wrapped up.

Ancient History: Sumer and Akkad, Babylonia, Assyria

I started out meaning to do this as three separate units: Sumer and Akkad, then Babylonia, then Assyria. But so many of the resources we used discussed all of the civilizations together, so I ended up doing the same.

We started the unit by reading:

• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 110-113
• Story of the World: Chapter 3
• Story of the World: Chapter 5

After that, we went through one of the following periodically while continuing to work our way through other resources of interest:

• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History page 132
• Story of the World: Chapter 7 
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 146-149
• Story of the World: Chapter 8
• Story of the World: Chapter 16
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 150-151
• Story of the World: Chapter 17
• I note that Chapter 17a is about Nebuchadnezzar's insanity. SOTW uses the Bible as a primary source for this story, and it is the only historical reference that seems to refer to his madness. While I did include the story here, I discussed it as one of the places where the historical narrative may be true or may be myth.

Nonfiction books we enjoyed:

• The Tigris and Euphrates: Rivers of the Fertile Crescent by Gary Miller (956.7 Mil)
• Write Around the World: The Story of How and Why We Learned to Write by Vivian French and Ross Collins (411 Fr)
• The Ancient Near East by Rebecca Stefoff (939.4 Ste) - Chapter 1 covers Mesopotamia

Fiction and myth books we enjoyed:

• Pepi and the Secret Names by Jill Paton Walsh and Fiona French
• The Three Princes retold by Eric A. Kimmel (398.2 Three Princes Kim) 
• Ishtar and Tammuz: A Babylonian Myth of the Seasons by Christopher Moore (398.2 Ishtar Moo) 
• The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor retold by John Yeoman, illustrated by Quentin Blake (398.208 Arabian Nights Yeo) - this was done as a longer read aloud 
• The Gilgamesh trilogy by Ludmila Zeman: Gilgamesh the King, The Revenge of Ishtar, The Last Quest of Gilgamesh (398.208 Gilgamesh Zem)
• Note: I would have liked to have included an Aladdin story, but my daughter was pretty much done with this time and place, so we moved on.

Documentaries we enjoyed:

• Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Mesopotamia (935 Anc) - This has several bibilical references

Activities we enjoyed:

• Making a clay tablet with air-dry clay and trying to write in our own form of heiroglyphics
• Baking sebetu rolls (recipe found on page 80 of Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors

Following along in history? Go back to the main Ancient History page.

The Fairy Tale Project

I'm a big fan of the BraveWriter Lifestyle. We do Poetry Teas. I would relax on grammar and writing instruction a la BraveWriter, but The Kid won't stand for that - she wants more more more. But the only "formal" writing projects for first grade will be NaNoWriMo and a huge fairy tale project. The general idea of BraveWriter's fairy tale project is to read and/or watch multiple versions of a fairy tale, then have the child narrate the fairy tale and illustrate it. I decided to have this one project from Jot It Down take our full year, with one fairy tale per month.

Month 1: Rumpelstiltskin


Month 2: Puss In Boots

Month 3: Little Red Riding Hood

Month 4: The Ugly Duckling

Month 5: Cinderella

Yet to come: Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel,  Hansel and Gretel

Fairy Tale Project: Rumpelstiltskin

Our first BraveWriter fairy tale project subject was Rumpelstiltskin. While I've always kind of liked this story, it turns out that The Kid does not. We therefore only read two versions:

• Rumpelstiltskin adapted and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky
• The Girl Who Spun Gold by Virginia Hamilton, illustrated by Leo Dillon

This did give us two stories that are similar in basic narrative but very different in cultural background.  After reading them both, I asked The Kid to narrate the tale. She grumpily told me that she did not remember the story. I asked her to just start talking about anything in the story and she did give me about 8-10 completely disjointed sentences, covering the basics of the story.

So the skill we ended up focusing on this month was ordering. I took the disjointed sentences of her narrative, printed them out and cut them up - one sentence per strip. I then asked her to help me put them in order, like a puzzle. Did this event happen before or after that one? I read it out to her after she put them in order and she was satisfied with her story, which I then reordered on the computer, printed out, and she was happy to illustrate.