This is a family fun night for Kindergarten, First Grade and the Adapted Physical Education grades in our building. The classes have been reading, studying, and interpreting fairy tales during their academic classes. The Fine Arts teachers designed this family fun night incorporating the Physical Education, Art and Music subject areas and developed interactive stations throughout the school.

We invited our families of children in Kindergarten, First Grade, and Adapted Physical Education classes to an evening of Fairy Tale Frolic. (We used poetic license and also incorporated some Mother Goose and Folklore.) We had approximately 450 people attend the evening's festivities. In our large gymnasium we had several stations.

Jack and the Beanstalk: Climbing ropes were available. (Green vine is at top of the rope).

Cinderella: One student sits on carpet square, other student puts a rope around hips and gives the "reigns" to seated student and pulls friend to the "ball".

Hansel & Gretel: Swing on climbing rope, land on folded mat, "find way" through obstacle course of cones with hockey sticks across the top to look like bridges, (over and under), enter gingerbread house at the end of the course. (House was made by the Kindergarten students out of a refrigerator box and beautifully decorated).

The Big Bad Wolf: Throw fleece balls at a cardboard cut out of the big bad wolf.

The Three Little Pigs: Provide a "junk" pile of boxes, cones, sticks, boards, odd pieces of equipment. Have students build a house like the 3 pigs. After building their house they can knock it down like the wolf!

Thumbelina: Be a mole and fly like a bird! Crawl through 2 tunnels and grab the still rings. An adult pulls student back while holding onto the rings. Student gets two swings on the rings and lands on a gymnastics crash mat. Student can write on chart if they like being a mole or a bird best.

Mufaro's Beautiful Daughter: Walk through a maze painted on the floor with shoe polish, walk across two balance beam while balancing a basket on head. (All just to get to the Wedding. As told in the story.)

Billy Goat's Gruff: Walk up one balance beam and down another (We set one end of the beam on the mat and the opposite end going up on part of the vaulting box; with the second beam, one end of the beam on the vaulting box and the opposite end on the mat, going down hill). After walking up and down the beam, the student then jumps on springboard and hits a hanging "troll" with their hand. Land on a crash mat. (We had a laughing machine under the beam to simulate the troll).

Puss 'N Boots: Two students stand on tires with batacas (foam swords) and try and fence (sword play) the other person off the tire.

Rip Van Winkle: Bowling. 3-4 throws(Trying to wake Rip)

Jack and Jill: A hill made of the gymnastics spotters box, student climbs up the hill and rolls down the wedge mat.

In our small gym: Several group games were being led by a teacher.

Snow White and the Dwarves: Teacher rolls lots of tennis balls all over the gym. The students (dwarves) must "mine" (pick up) one tennis ball at a time and put it back in the bucket.

Gingerbread Man: Parachute game of "Cat and Mouse". The "cat" is the kid (on top of the parachute) trying to catch the gingerbread man and the "mouse" (under the parachute) is the gingerbread man.

Chicken Little: Assorted parachute games. ("The sky is falling")

Goldilocks and the Three Bears: 3 bears hide their eyes at one end of the gym and pretend to sleep. Goldilocks (all the other kids) sneak up behind the bears. When a loud noise is made by the teacher, the bears wake up and chase goldilocks back to the safety line (her house). If caught Goldilocks joins the bears.

In the library:
Quiet Time: An author(or Media teacher) is reading fairy tales.

Puppet Castle: A cardboard castle and puppets are available for kids to create and perform their own fairy tales.

In the Music room: Music teacher is reciting a fairy tale and the children have instruments for the sound effects in the story.

Our fifth grade students are "strolling" the halls, playing their instruments as strolling minstrels.

In the Art room: Spiders are being created out of assorted art materials. "Jewels" necklaces are being made and eaten out of Fruit Loops, mini- marshmallows and licorce.

Enrichment Room: Older students are performing a puppet show written and produced by themselves earlier in the school year.

In the ESL (English as a Second Language)Room: The ESL students have produced an iMovie of fairy tales popular in their culture.

In the Hallway: The Little Red Hen: A snack station. Families were asked to donate a food item to Little Ren Hen for everyone to share. People brought in "pigs in a blanket", "poison" apples, veggies for the billy goats, ants on a log, etc. We provided juice for the families.

At the end of the evening we closed all the stations, asked all the families to join us in the gym for Cinderella's Ball. This was our time to thank everyone for coming and all the volunteers. We had three waltzes for families to dance together and we lived happily ever after!

To mark each station we put a music stand with a balloon and a color picture of the fairy tale.

We decorated the hallway to look like the outside door of a castle and the moat. We had two photo opportunity stations where students could go. 1)A throne - your picture taken with the queen. One of the Kindergarten teachers dressed as a queen. We had a tiara and a crown available for the kids to wear at the throne. 2) We also had wooden cut-outs of the 3 pigs and the 3 bears. Kids could put their face in the hole where the pigs or bears face should be. Great pictures!

Many volunteers dressed the part! Women in evening gowns, farm clothes for the 3 pigs, etc. (You will be surprised how many people have costumes or hats, boots that fit the fairy tale theme!

Please e-mail if you have questions or other ideas we could have added to our evening!

Teaching Suggestions/Tips:

This evening took some planning and lots of volunteers.

Email this best practice!