Fairy Tale Project: Cinderella

Yay! We finally got back to our fairy tale project!

And, wow, there really are a lot of versions of Cinderella!

Some of the versions can get extremely dark - did you know that Grimm's version include the stepsisters cutting off parts of their feet to try to fit the shoe? And then getting their eyes pecked out by birds as retribution for their treatment of Cinderella? Yikes.

The Kid doesn't like her stories to be that dark, so we went a different direction: Cinderella stories from around the world. I had no idea how much the stories varied. Here's what we read:

Cinderella by Loek Koopmans (based on the Charles Perrault version)
The Golden Sandal by Rebecca Hickox
The Rough-Face Girl by Rafe Martin
The Korean Cinderella by Shirley Climo
The Egyptian Cinderella by Shirley Climo
The Irish Cinderlad by Shirley Climo
Cinderlily by David Ellwand (doesn't really fit in with the round-the-world theme, but pretty and whimsical)

We could have gone on and on. The versions above were chosen because they were readily on my library's shelves the day we went.

The discussions we had from this were quite interesting. I've always thought the tale a little ridiculous with the they-danced-for-a-few-hours-and-then-the-prince-was-utterly-obsessed-and-they-decided-to-marry-from-this-one-interaction bit. But The Golden Sandal is set in a time and place that includes arranged marriages, so the two never even meet until they are betrothed! The Kid didn't know anything about this custom, and we talked about how marriage is treated in different cultures and during different times.

After reading them all, we talked about what made a Cinderella story a "Cinderella story". Many of the versions were big departures from the story known in the U.S. The common threads we found were that the "Cinderella" character had to be badly treated by at least some family members, there had to be a very desirable male, there had to be a "test" of some sort (like fitting the glass slipper), and there was always some element of magic/supernatural. All the rest of what we know as a Cinderella story is quite negotiable in other versions.

The Kid wrote her own version, with the only "rule" being that she had to follow the things we had outlined as being non-negotiable for Cinderella stories. And since she is learning to type, she was determined to write it herself, so this is the first Fairy Tale Project that I haven't taken dictation for! She is so proud of the story that she wrote all on her own!

What a "Math Break" Looks Like At My House

The Kid says she hates math. This is heartbreaking. I love math. She used to love math.

So we're on an extended math break. We haven't done formal math since December and I don't know when we'll add it back in. Not having math class hasn't stopped us from having lots of math, though. In fact, I'm starting to suspect that we have more math in our day now than we did when we had math class!

Dragonbox Numbers: An iPad app that works like animated Cuisenaire rods. C rods might be the one and only manipulative we never used. The skills for this app are appropriate for preschool to maybe 1st grade, but The Kid is loving using it.

Slice Fractions: Another iPad app. If Dragonbox and Cut the Rope had a baby, this might be it. No previous exposure to fractions is needed, and it is truly a game not just math in disguise :)

Sir Cumference: a series of books with lots of math puns and that requires some math to solve an issue for the characters. They're lots of fun!

Penrose the Mathematical Cat: Oh, how I love Penrose. This book gives a very brief introduction to lots of math topics, most of which are not covered in any standard elementary math program. Honestly, I think this book may be best if the parent enjoys math and can go deeper into the topics as desired.

Math Adventures series and other books by Wendy Clemson: We stumbled across these at the library and The Kid has checked out most the series now and reads them for fun.

Beast Academy guides: Though The Kid isn't ready to try tackling the Beast workbooks again, she does love reading the guides. The math beasts are fun, relatable, and also sometimes struggle with their math.

Murderous Maths: A very British series of math(s) books. These are more dense than the other books on this list, but the authors seem to find joy in making the story around math fun. The concepts presented are often well beyond what The Kid can actually do, but she likes to let ideas percolate in her brain.

Bedtime Math: We renamed this series Mealtime Math in our house, and cover a couple pages at lunch or dinner. This series of math books has a simple setup: a silly bit of information, followed by 3-4 math questions of increasing difficulty. It's brilliant. They're so very silly, and are all in word problem format.

Toothpick puzzles: There are some of these in the first Beast Academy workbook, there is one in every issue of Highlights MathMania, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about you can find some here.

Sleeping Queens: a fun game that includes the need to add up combinations of 5, 10, 15, and 20, plus you use single digit numbers to form equations.

Zeus on the Loose: another fun game that includes adding a single digit number to a 2-digit number, plus occasional subtracting and rounding


And the math book section at the library is at call number 510. Lots of math books are thinly veiled instructional texts or workbooks. Don't get me wrong, those are likely still more fun for many kids than traditional math, but they're not nearly the same as a well crafted book that happens to include math! Have fun and choose wisely.