Fairytales Week

‘Fairy tales in Classrooms’ enabled all our pupils to experience a range of traditional tales. In preparation for our themed week, all children worked with Tan Draig, creative practitioner, to make a variety of items to enhance their enjoyment of the stories. In Nursery children explored the story of ‘The Gingerbread Man’ and made a variety of different gingerbread men. In Class 1 children made a coach and castle together with individual dolls as they explored the story of Cinderella.

In Class 2, the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker was explored. Children made a pair of huge shoes together with individual shoes and a shoe factory. A house made of sweets was created in Class 3 as the children learnt about Hansel and Gretel. In Class 4, a forest and a numerous baskets were made for Little Red Riding Hood; each child also made an axe! The Pied Piper was the focus in Class 5 where children made a life sized Pied Piper and many rats which were subsequently used to create short stop-frame animation films as the rats ran amok around the school! A life-sized bed was created in Class 6 for the story of the The Princess and the Pea. Children also made their own imaginative beds complete with characterful peas! In Class 7 the focus was Chicken Licken and children made a huge tree complete with acorns.

Over the course of three days, the children visited each classroom in school to experience and learn about each story by undertaking a wide range of activities related to the stories, eg, in Class 2 children explored the magical elf kingdom whilst in Class 1 children made glittering slippers. In Class 7 children explored weight using acorns made by the children.

Parents were involved on this work – many took up the invitation of working with their children and Tan Draig in after-school workshops to make 101 dalmatians!

This work was enhanced by visits from Footprints Theatre Trust and Babbling Vagabonds. Professional storytellers gave the children experience of even more traditional tales. The children worked with the storytellers to create their own storyboards. Angela Garry, a local author, came into school to read one of her stories to the children.

At home, children made story hats and brought these into school. We had a very exciting and colourful story hat parade in the school hall.

The work culminated with all children and staff dressing as a character from a fairy tale. Throughout the week, children had worked with Tan Draig to create items such as a wishing well, a tunnel of thorns, a beanstalk and toadstools. These were all brought together to transform the school hall into a magical fairy-tale forest which the children visited throughout the day to complete a variety of exciting challenges. Many families took up the invitation of wandering through the fairy-tale forest at the end of the day.