Explore Fairytales with Brave Writer

Lately, I’ve been gushing about one of my favorite programs: Brave Writer (stay tuned for my review due out this week!). This summer, we have enjoyed quite a few Brave Writer Jot it Down projects, including the fairytale project I’m about to share with you.

Explore Fairytales with Brave Writer

Kids love fairytales! They love them. What better way to get your children interested in reading and writing than by exploring the world of fairytales with them? The Jot it Down program recommends that you read one fairytale per month with your children, so this project could span the entire year. My children were so obsessed with the idea of this project that they requested we cover one fairytale per week.

Once you’ve selected your fairytale of the month/week, here are some ideas for more in-depth learning:

Take that one fairytale and read multiple versions of it.
Act it out!
Explore with puppets!
Draw pictures based on the story!
Once the pictures are complete, have your child dictate a story to you and act as his or her secretary.

At the end of this project, your child will have an entire fairytale book! All you need to do is to assemble the book for them and voila! you have a project that involved:

Reading
Writing
Art
Play
Memories!

Look at all that WRITING!

The Princess and the Frog

Some of Our Favorite Fairytale Collections

It wouldn’t be a My Little Poppies post without some book recommendations, so I’m going to share some of my kids’ favorite fairytale collections.

This is Miss T’s favorite (age 5.5)

Seuss’ fave (age 4)

Leo’s favorite (age 7) Warning: Grimm is fantastic but also fantastically creepy.

Our Brave Writer Jot it Down Fairytale Project

Here are just a few photos from our Fairytale project. The kids had an absolute blast, as did I. It’s a project that we won’t soon forget, folks! Plus, each child now has his or her very own fairytale book to keep for always!

This was our Princess and the Frog day.

Love the lily pads!

I’ll mourn when he stops drawing everyone’s belly button!

Seuss can tell you a story that lasts three days!

Ready to be assembled!

Fairytale-Related Games to Take it One Step Further

You know that we love our board games over here! I am a firm believer that games are educational and that they are a wonderful way to create family memories, build relationships, work on social skills, use your brain, and build upon learning. Here are some fantastic games that would be a perfect way to celebrate your finished fairytale project:

Don’t Forget to Wrap it Up with a Family Movie Night!

The Brave Writer Lifestyle is fantastic for many reasons, but one of those reasons is that it includes family movie nights as part of the homeschool routine. I love to wrap up our learning with some popcorn and a related movie or documentary. There are a multitude of options for fairytales- I’m not even going to attempt to list them all. Instead, I’ll give you a recent example of how we ended a unit study with a movie night: