Fractured Fairy Tale Activities

Today started much the same as our Fairy Tale Breakfast Morning on Thursday. We made porridge (oatmeal to be exact) and we went for a short walk to let it cool off a little. Sound familiar?
As soon as we had decided on oatmeal for breakfast, my 6 year old ran off to get the servings conversion chart she had made last week. She wanted to refer to it while she and her sister made breakfast for four.

My little KindergartenDropOut requested Goldilocks once again during breakfast but I had another book in mind - The True Story of the Three Little Pigs written by Jon Scieska. This was suitable for today's topic - fractured fairy tales.

The Telephone Game

To introduce the topic, I talked about how stories survived through the telling and retelling of fables. To illustrate how this may result in slightly different versions of stories, we played the 'telephone' game. One person whispers a sentence into someone's ear. That second person whispers it into the next person's ear. And so on if you have more players. The last person says it aloud. Then the first person reveals what they really said and everyone hears how the sentence changed after being retold several times.

What is a Fractured Fairytale?

Afterwards, we discussed... What is a fractured fairy tale? Then, using the book How to Write a Fractured Fairy Tale as reference, we talked about the different ways a fairy tale could be retold. We also noted that the story we just read was retold in a different point of view - that of the wolf.

Brainstorming Fractured Fairy Tale Titles

After breakfast, I took out the dry erase board and asked them to name some good characters, then bad characters, and last I asked for some settings. I wrote their responses into 3 columns. Here is what we ended up with...

*They added themselves to the list. I've replaced their names with the
nicknames I use for them on this blog. **The baby sea turtle is our mascot;
she is usually included in all of our activities.

Then, I told them, if read side by side, these could be titles of new fairy tales and a way to inspire some writing. So, for example, we could write a story about Snow White and the Evil KDO in the future!

They were excited to read each one through. Once reaching the bottom KDO decided to fill in the rest of the row that starts with Baby Turtle. She said "How about Baby Turtle and Dr. Doofenshmirtz Under the Sea?" Ballerina added "Baby Turtle could be like Perry." (Dr. Doofenshmirtz - an evil character - and Perry - a spy platypus - are characters from the tv show Phineas and Ferb).

I think this got them a little excited and they both told, out loud, their version of the 3 Little Pigs.

Fairy Tale Writing on a Dry Erase Board

Next, I asked them to come up with a fractured fairy tale or a whole new tale of their own. They were to write the When/Where (setting), Who (characters), What (problem/conflict), and the Ending of their stories. Instead of paper and pencil, we used dry erase board to make writing fun.

KDO's story map:
Once upon a time in a castle, far, far away
People that are horses and unicorns
want to cook but don't know what to cook
So they look in a cookbook
[They] cook[ed] eggy-potaty

Note: She calls egg salad "eggy-potaty"

I first took a smaller erase board to model what they needed to do and gave these examples:

When/Where: In the year 3214, under the sea

Who: there were 3 Baby Sea Turtles and the Big Bad Shark

What: The shark wanted to eat the poor baby turtles

Ending (KDO volunteered to finish the story map):
The baby turtles went to look for their mommy and daddy. They helped the baby turtles get to shore away from the shark.

Next they took turns on the dry erase board. To the left is KindergartenDropOut's story along with illustrations.

More Fractured Fairy Tale Ideas for a 10 year old

My ten-year-old Ballerina has been reading a series of books she found at the library. Her choosing of these books was one of the things that inspired me to do some fractured fairy tale activities. Here are the books she read:

When my kids come across a book they really enjoy, I look up activities or lessons online for ideas. I've discovered some times you can find lesson plans, study guides or book-related activities on the author's website or the publisher's website. The author of these particular books is Adam Gidwitz. On his website, you can find a teacher's guide for A Tale Dark and Grimm. It's filled with lesson plans to last your for a few weeks.

For my 10-year-old I chose 3 activities:

1 - I had my daughter choose some vocabulary words from one of the suggested lists in the guide. However, we used them to create vocabulary wands - a craft she chose to do after seeing how fun it was for her younger sister.

2 - I had her pick a fairy tale. This time to rewrite it's ending in the writing style of Adam Gidwitz.

3 - In her sketchbook, I asked her to draw an illustration of one of the characters using the character traits she read in the beginning chapter of A Tale Dark and Grimm.

If you like these activities make sure to check out our full list of fairy tale activities.