Fairy Tale Castles

Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom....

I LOVE the castles we made last week during our fairy tale unit.  Our castles were inspired by the ones done by Patty from Deep Space Sparkle. I began by having the children draw a castle using cray-pas.  The drawings were directed using directions similar to those found Fairy Dust Teaching.    I then encouraged the children to add lots of patterns with the cray-pas.  When they were done with the details, they used liquid watercolors to paint the castles.  They loved the way their patterns showed through the watercolors.

I then cut out the castles and created a giant kingdom.  We used finger prints (dipped into slightly mixed black and white paint) to make our cobblestone path. I always love collections of the children's art and this bright bulletin board really showcases their personalities:)

Our Fairy Tale Castle

I think the kids' favorite part of our Fairy Tale unit is our castle.

 I made the castle using 3 refrigerator boxes and 5 washer/dryer boxes.  I bought the plans and special rivets from  Mr. McGroovy's website.  I worked on it for about 10 hours (Mr. McGroovy says it should take 2).  I got much better as I went along and if I do it again, I'll get help (I bet I'll be able to finish the whole thing in 2-3 hours next year).

Fairy Tales - Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

Once again inspired by Fairy Dust Teaching we made a story map of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.  I took a large sheet of bulletin board paper and drew a path down the middle.  At one end of the path I wrote "Once upon a time" and at the other end I wrote "The End".  We then retold the story together and I added basic drawings along the sides of the path (such as 3 bears and then a little further down a girl and then 3 bowls, etc).    

The class then got to work adding color and details. We then took turns walking down the path and retelling the story.

 

I put this out on several days and in addition to using the path for retelling, each day more details were added by my eager artists.

Fairy Tales- The 3 Billy Goats Gruff

After reading several versions of The 3 Billy Goats Gruff, the kids acted out the story using simple masks I made with poster board.  I also overheard them "trip trapping" over the bridge that is part of our outside play structure.

Fairy Tales - The 3 Little Pigs

The first story we read during our Fairy Tale Unit was The 3 Little Pigs. The kids helped me decorate simple cardboard cutouts that they used over and over to retell the story.

We used Fairy Dust Teaching's guided drawing to make pigs (so much fun!)

Fairy Tales - The Princess and the Pea

 

 After reading The Princess and the Pea, we made these cute princesses.  I used Fairy Dust Teaching's guided drawings to make the princesses and then let the kids choose how many mattresses their princess would sleep on. The last thing they did was add a real dried split pea at the bottom of their mattress pile.