telling tales -- story work

(Breakfast with Lucario -- he likes to steal food from the kids, amongst other mischief.)

I finally finished reading all the stories in the Enki Education 1st Grade Fairy Tale collection. (The binder is about 400 pages, and there are about 100 Fairy Tales from around the world included.) Now my task is to select which fairy tales I want the kids to hear during our coming school year. To help myself, I kept a running page of notes which I added to after reading each story -- I jotted down the title, the pages I can find it on, the country the story is from, what I might use the story for (introducing certain letters, or number qualities, or math processes, etc), when in the year I might want to use them (marked "early" for simpler tales), and then rated them with a smiley face system. Stories that I felt suited my kids and our family well I rated with a smile. Those that were acceptable, but that I didn't necessarily love, I rated with a straight-line mouth. Those that I really liked in general, but had a component that I found objectionable I marked with a slashed-mouth. And those that I just found unacceptable I marked with a frown. The vast majority of the stories got happy faces, certainly enough to meet our needs for the coming year.

(Lucario showing a bit of self-control while Zoo Boy eats.)

Our first school block (which we'll begin the 2nd week of September) is a Language Arts block, and our focus will be on introducing consonants. Now, obviously, my kids already know their consonants (they are both already reading). But the idea behind introducing them via Fairy Tales is that they will develop a deeper understanding of how each individual letter is used in the overall makeup of our language -- in other words, the basis for comprehension -- while at the same time working on other basic language arts skills, such as reading, handwriting, rote memorization, grammar, sentence structure, and the poetry and flow of the English Language. And by using a balance of traditional stories from throughout the world, their study of Humanities is given a good strong start.

(Zoo Boy feeding Lucario -- he is doing a great job taking care of his bird!)

The reason Enki uses Fairy Tales, as opposed to other types of stories, in their approach is because all cultures traditionally use these types of stories in the upbringing of their children. These stories have survived the test of time, being passed orally from generation to generation. Ancient wisdom and the center of all humanity can be found in these stories. And 1st grade students are at the perfect stage of development to openly accept this ancient wisdom, and to listen to the rhythm of language and human spirit that flows beneath the words themselves. They soon outgrow this stage, and will identify the stories as "not true" or "that didn't really happen". But at this one magical stage of development, they are open to all possibilities and are still able to take in the world without over analyzing what is presented to them.

(J's pictorial directions for doing one of his magic tricks.)

So the work of our first block will look like this: I will read a fairy tale to the boys, including a repeating verse that emphasizes the consonant(s) I am introducing. (These verses are included with the stories.) The following day, the boys will recall the story (working on sequential thinking and comprehension), then we'll do a led drawing (I will show them what we are drawing and they will follow along -- well, J will anyway, I'm not so sure Zoo Boy is ready for that sort of thing yet), in which the letter we are working on is represented. We will also read (together) the verse from the story, which I will have prepared in advance. The day after that, we will again recite the verse, then look at the pictures we drew and find the hidden letter. Then they will write the capital and lower case versions of the letter. Finally, they will write out the verse from the story (working on all sorts of skills, including eye tracking as they have to copy the words from my version). In Zoo Boy's case, he'll only write as much as he is capable of at first (probably just the title, or one line from the verse). Later that day, we'll read our next Fairy tale and start the cycle over again.

(A sand face, my own beach creation.)

Our school blocks will be 4 weeks long, and after our first Language Arts block will come our first Math block (during which time I'll be introducing Number Qualities, in a similar way to the Consonants, but I'll write more details about that as we get into our first block and I start planning for the next). We'll alternate between Language Arts and Math in this manner all year. Our science work will come every weekend, as we work with the Enki 1st Grade Nature Stories, although much of that work will be field trips to experience the natural phenomena first-hand. Again, more details as we begin to delve into it.

Meanwhile, back to the planning of our first block! Now that I've got the Fairy Tales under control, it's time to take as serious look at the 1st Grade Movement activities and start planning our Movement Circle....