Return to Fairy Tales Index Page

A Fairy Tale Based Curriculum for Preschool Students with Special Needs   

Valerie Hookham   

Academic Setting    

School Setting and Students   

This unit is designed for use in the public preschool classrooms across the city of Albuquerque.  Albuquerque Public Schools, like all districts across the country, has a federally mandated program for three and four year olds with significant delays in speech and language, motor ability, or social/emotional development.  The programs are located most often in elementary schools.   Typically, the classes meet for two and half-hours four days a week, with each site hosting two classes per day.  The educational team consists of a teacher certified in early childhood development, one or two educational assistants, a half time speech therapist, a half time occupational therapist, a physical therapist one day per week, and a part time school social worker. The classroom staff typically works as a team with the entire class, and pull out of students is kept to a minimum.  There are normally at least three adults per classroom of up to ten students.  While this may sound ample, the educational team is usually kept quite busy ministering to the various needs of the students, facilitating the classroom activities, and keeping the children safe.  Students with aggression issues, or who endanger by running away are in almost every classroom.   

The range of students served in these classrooms is extensive.   Some students are nonverbal or nonambulatory, and some have sensory impairments such as low vision or hearing.  Some students are multiply involved, while others have problems with self-regulation and tolerating close proximity of other children.  Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, or other organic syndromes are not uncommon.  Other students may have moderate speech or fine motor delays.  As a result, many skills which are taken for granted, such as chewing, cutting, jumping, pencil grasp, or ascending stairs, must be taught through direct instruction as the students will not master them otherwise. Given the wide range of students’ needs, curriculum units are designed to address many content areas simultaneously, focused around one theme. 

                 Additionally, the socioeconomic status, cultural background, and functional level of the families of these students vary widely.  Some are recent immigrants who don’t speak English or understand how to obtain services for themselves or their children, who came to the U.S. specifically because there were more educational services for their children with medical diagnoses.  Other families have received early intervention services (birth to age three) and are simply continuing to access the supports available to their children.   

Goals   

I am using goals and benchmarks developed by the Early Childhood Network of the University of New Mexico Center for Development and Disability.  This group developed five goals and this curriculum unit will focus on the third goal:  

Children Will Communicate Optimally And Effectively In A Variety Of Settings.  The emphasis will be on Benchmark A: Child will use gestures, sounds, words, or sentences to convey wants and needs or to express meaning to others.   

I will also focus on Benchmark C: Child will initiate, respond to and, maintain reciprocal social interactions with peers and adults in a variety of settings (Early Childhood Network 8-12).  As a school social worker, I’m especially interested in fostering independence and effective communication in children.   

Context and Background   

Students are being increasingly admitted to the public preschool program with social/emotional concerns.  The majority of the students also have some speech/language delay.  Therefore, enhancing communication is of great importance.  It has often been observed that children who display aggressive behaviors such as hitting and biting often stop exhibiting these once they develop intelligible speech.  Since children love stories and preliteracy skills are a major part of the preschool curriculum, enhancing communication through a medium which appeals to children such as a fairy tale is a natural choice.   

            I would like to choose one fairy tale, which shows a resourceful protagonist in a non-gender-biased setting, and use that as the basis for my curriculum.  I plan to use multiple activities across a range of foci (cutting, coloring, singing, acting out, reading aloud, making up stories) to foster child development across areas.  It is not my intention to single out emotional or psychological content; rather, I plan to build that into the rest of the curriculum so that it fosters functional responses to life in general.    

            The challenge is to choose something that corresponds to the specific cognitive level of my students.   Typically, the “stories” used with this population amount to no more than a paragraph of print with a line or phrase used repeatedly, a few characters, little plot or conflict, served up with lots of pictures.   Any tale with a complex plot, more than one magical or unknown character, or excessive or graphic violence would be inappropriate for use with this age group, to say nothing of this developmental level, which can be as low as eighteen months.   

            Linda Williams’ story The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything (1986) fits my requirements nicely.  An old lady goes out into the woods at night with her basket and is followed by a succession of animated articles of clothing.  Each article makes a scary noise, and yet she refuses to be afraid.   The clothing then assembles itself into a figure with a pumpkin head and knocks on her door.  It tells her that it wants to scare her, and she comes up with a resolution that satisfies both parties.  The tale ends with the lady looking out her window at the new scarecrow in her garden.  The story has a repetitive plot, makes use of onomatopoetic sounds which the children can learn to anticipate as well as the old lady’s signature line, “I’m not afraid of you!” which is said after each encounter with a scary-seeming object.  I chose this story because it is an appropriate tool to affirm and build self-reliance in the students and may erase or moderate some of the limiting and negative messages that they often receive in other settings.  There is also a ‘win-win’ ending which is a nice way to look at conflict resolution.  Additionally, it is a seasonal tale that would fit naturally into fall lesson plans.   

Review of Literature and Discussion  

In his article “Spells of Enchantment” Jack Zipes, who has written many books and articles on fairy tales, states that it is extremely difficult to define a fairy tale (370).  He goes on to say that one of the defining characteristics is a sense of magic or wonder that manifests in a tale.  Another is a happy ending.  Fairy tales are often short, repetitive, and contain “stock” rather than individualized characters.  All of these characteristics make them suitable for use with young children.  Of course, many of the tales depict violence and cruelty, so should be screened prior to reading to preschoolers.  As many teachers are aware, most of the classic tales have been updated to be more inclusive, as well as more palatable to modern readers, and more suitable for young children.     

            It is generally thought that fairy tales derived from folk tales that were just that—oral stories passed down and around by ordinary people.  It wasn’t until Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the second edition of their Children’s and Household Tales in 1812-15 that fairy tales were written down specifically for a child audience (383).   

            As expected, there was a paucity of literature relating to preschoolers, fairy tales, and curriculum.   There were studies of fairy tale use in curriculums for older children, and use of stories with young children, but little in the way of theoretical underpinnings.  There were a couple of thought papers describing story-based techniques, and two or three references which used story-based curriculums for preschoolers with special needs.    

            Collins-Standley, Gan, and Yu published a study in which they showed two- to four-year-old students book covers depicting fairy tale protagonists in scary, violent, or romantic situations and asked the children which they would prefer to “read”.  Unsurprisingly, boys overwhelmingly preferred the violent book cover, while girls slightly preferred the romantic book cover.  The strength of the girls’ preference increased as they aged, whereas the boys’ preference remained strong from age two to five.  They further established that there was a significant positive correlation between children’s toy and book preferences and the parents’ expressed opinions about which toys were gender appropriate for their children.  Collins-Standley, et al also documented that the children’s book choices correlated positively with teacher ratings of student personalities, i.e. a child described as aggressive chose the book cover depicting violence.  This finding was consistent across genders.  In this sample, anyway, preschool teachers knew their students, though parents appear to have the largest influence on their children’s gender identity.   This is consistent with my experience in the school setting.     

            In another study, Stig Brostrom had young children tell their own fairy tales, which the classroom staff then recorded.  He postulated three elements for a story to exist: a beginning, an end, and use of the past.  Unfortunately, he did not specify either the age or the functional level of the children he studied.  Judging by their stories these must have been typically developing children able to speak in sentences and familiar with stories and pretend play.  The stories contained such elements as kings, queens, robbers, brooches, shopping trips, and magical creatures.  Some of the plots contained rather abstract concepts such as a wish for the company of other people.   These are characters and concepts that are beyond the reach of the majority of students entering the APS preschool program.   

            A similar paper was written by Dorothy Oldhaver and published in Montessori Life.  Oldhaver gives examples of stories dictated by typically developing three- to six-year-olds.  The stories are imaginative and use creative language, and an obvious understanding of sentence structure and cause and effect.  While the technique of story dictation is one that is used in many APS preschool classrooms, the “stories” produced would show a lower level of linguistic development.  However, I see it as a useful tool in a curriculum unit.   

            In a brief article, Ellen Booth Church described techniques for enhancing her students orally shared personal stories (64).  She encouraged this by using a ‘talking stone’ which is placed in the center of the circle of children after they had a chance to examine it.  Anyone with something to say picked it up and only the person holding the stone was permitted to speak, thus facilitating classroom order and turn-taking skills, which many preschoolers need to learn.  Church demonstrated the technique by telling a story from her own life, and used family photos brought in by the students to facilitate personal storytelling.  The students’ stories could then be turned into journals with either dictation or pretend writing.   

            She also described using action figures and puppets to facilitate brief storytelling from the students’ own lives.  The only caveat of this technique is that the teacher needs to be prepared for possible intense personal sharing.  It’s not uncommon for preschoolers to talk about Daddy hitting Mommy or announce that Daddy’s in jail during goodbye circle.  Therefore I think it’s critical to cultivate an attentive, nonjudgmental attitude and also know how to curtail such disclosures when the buses are waiting outside without making the child feel that what she has said is unimportant or inappropriate.   

            Lorna Werner, a speech pathologist in Florida, wrote about her work with children with speech delays in a public housing project.  The children ranged in age from two to twelve and either attended classes at the local community center or were visited by the teaching team in their homes for the duration of a six-week summer project.  Though not specifically fairy tale-based, the curriculum she described used Mother Goose rhymes and Dr. Seuss stories to engage the children and get them speaking.  I think her work raised an important issue; if children and their families are not able or willing to come to us, will we go to them?   

            An elementary school, the setting for most of the preschool programs in this district, is not the natural environment of a four-year-old.  Developmental specialists, who work with the birth to age three population with medical conditions which delayed developmental milestones, work the majority of the time in the family home.  As a school social worker, much of my work is with the parents at home.  Albuquerque Public Schools does, in fact, provide homebound services for those three and four year olds who are too medically fragile or otherwise unable to attend one of the classroom-based programs.  The third option for this population is an hour-long semiweekly session of up to three children with speech and language, occupational, and physical therapists.  It should be mentioned that participation in preschool is at the parents’ discretion.   

            In the most applicable published study, Gayle Emory Merrefield, another speech pathologist and a teacher at the Jewish Community Center in Staten Island designed a four-month curriculum based on “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.”  They wanted to incorporate Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence and use it to teach to the students’ strengths, presenting the same material in a variety of sensory modes, in hopes to strengthen students’ areas of delay, notably speech and language.  All of the four and five year olds had moderate to severe delays in this area, and many had fine motor, attention span, and behavioral issues as well.  Most were in their second year of preschool and had had previous curriculum units that built a foundation for this one.   

            The team decided never to present information solely in linguistic terms (Merrefield 60).  They wanted to use the story to teach the concepts small, medium, and large, temperature, ruminant behavior, and others.  Merrefield wrote songs for the story unit, which were performed once for the class by the staff. Thereafter, the staff started with the children joining in while they worked on motor activities related to the unit, such as making papier-mâché figures, which could be used to act out the story.  Action verbs were taught by actually doing the action.  The story emphasized the varying sizes of the three billy goats as well as the sweet grass to be found on the other side of the bridge.  The students learned about temperature, texture, and goat behavior by pretending to be goats eating hot grass (French cut green beans) cold grass, (shredded iceberg lettuce) and sweet grass (grated coconut with green food coloring) on all fours, without utensils.   

            Over the course of the curriculum unit, the children sang songs, made figures, performed and filmed their fairy tale for an audience.  The teachers found that the children’s language use increased and became more sophisticated.   For example, one child began to use pronouns after the unit.  The children were also able to transfer the spatial concepts they had learned to new situations.    

            The program and population described by Merrefield were very similar to what would be found in a typical preschool classroom in Albuquerque Public Schools.  The curriculum she designed corresponds to what is envisioned for this unit, except that the emphasis would be on independence and communicating one’s needs and desires verbally rather than on language development alone.   

            A storybook-based curriculum is used in some of the Albuquerque preschool classrooms that includes an activity book, a videotape, and “storybook bags” for teachers, as well as copies of sample lesson plans for each story used (Fetherston and England, 1998).  It includes twelve stories, designed to be used for three weeks each. Each story includes ideas for snack, circle time, room set up, small group activities, and room decorations.  The curriculum attempts to strike a balance between structured and unstructured play so as to maximize learning (Storybook Based Curriculum).  Included is direct teaching of concepts for delayed children, as they often do not respond to indirect teaching or incidental learning.  The small group activities address the following areas: language, cognition, audition, social, sensory, and gross and fine motor.  Parent involvement is also encouraged through letters sent home so that the child can do “carryover” activities at home to strengthen his new skills.  In their preface, Fetherston and England state that they wanted to go beyond the traditional theme-based approach to preschool curriculum planning to incorporate meaningful stories.   

            Few of the stories used in this approach qualify as fairy tales, however.  Also, the parent letter is long and its language too complex for many of the preschool parents served in the Albuquerque program.  It is not uncommon to have parents who speak little or no English, who are developmentally delayed themselves, or who did not complete much formal schooling and are not socialized to the ideas of reading and “homework.”  Therefore, any material sent home has to be brief, easy to understand, and may have to be translated, or even transmitted orally as some parents do not respond to written communication.  While interesting and innovative, the storybook-based curriculum doesn’t cover the depth of skills Merrefield did in her “Three Billy Goats Gruff” unit.   

                 Merrefield has developed both the most extensive story- or folk tale-based curriculum and one tailored specifically for preschool children with special needs.   It is impressive that the lesson lasted for four months, with the students’ interest maintained throughout.  The scope of this unit will be considerably less ambitious. 

             One of the reasons preschool children enjoy fairy tales is their inability to think abstractly.  From age three to five they are magical thinkers, believing that thinking something causes it to be so.   As any parent or teacher knows, great leaps over logical progression are as nothing to them.  At the same time, materials must be carefully screened for violence, gender or ethnic bias, yet it is not always cause for alarm when a four-year-old acts out aggression in her play, provided she is not destroying property or hurting someone.  She may just be playing at her developmental level.   

            Almost all preschool classrooms incorporate a daily schedule that includes common activities.  Free play, where children choose which toys and in which areas of the room they wish to play, often starts the day.  The classroom itself is often divided into several sections which may contain a computer, a play kitchen, a dress up area, a water table with toys, an area for tabletop activities, and an area for circle time, as well as shelves for storage of toy trucks, dinosaurs, puzzles, etc.   

            The class may also begin their time together on the preschool playground (special smaller equipment for smaller bodies).  There is typically a welcome circle time, where name recognition, days of the week, counting, and waiting one’s turn are practiced, usually with songs and visual aides, as well as help from the children. Circle time is also a time for reading short books, or discussing upcoming activities.  Many classes also have a goodbye circle where each student is named and told when the next class will be (classes do not meet on Wednesdays).  A tabletop activity where the students may be cutting, coloring, gluing, is also part of their day. Snack time is a chance to practice oral-motor, counting, and language skills, as well as fine motor (pouring and use of utensils) and social skills. There is typically a theme around which the activities are based.  For example, an apple theme can be used to teach emotion recognition, size, and color as small, medium, and large green, red, and yellow apples with smiles, frowns, or grimaces drawn on them are chosen by each student during circle time.   

            It must be kept in mind that many of the skills we take for granted must be taught to students who either have not received instruction at home or whose developmental conditions make it more difficult to learn, or both.   

Implementation    

Lesson Plans 

The ideas listed are not meant to be an exhaustive description of each day’s classroom activities; rather they’re to serve as a guide and spur the teaching team’s own creativity.  It is not necessary that every activity on every day relate to the curriculum theme.  If desired, the unit can be extended and the scarecrow theme continued through the scarecrow’s point of view by using Mary Packard’s book, The Shy Scarecrow, which is appropriate for this age group and time of year.  The book Storybook-Based Curriculum by Fetherston and England is chock full of activities.   

First Day   

On the first day of the unit the classroom could be decorated with pumpkins, both real and paper, scattered around the room, as well as dried leaves and pictures of scarecrows.   Parents might have been asked to send in old, adult-sized clothes, for dress up and for acting out the story as it is read.  A preliminary note or phone call should be made to parents about the family pumpkin carving coming up later in the week.  Children could spend time talking during circle time about what changes they notice outdoors, using leaves or bare twigs to pass around and discuss.   

            During song time, a familiar tune could be used to integrate the new theme.  For example, the song “Five Little Monkeys” could become “Five Little Pumpkins.”  Fetherston and England have published another set of lyrics, complete with accompanying gestures (52).   This song will then be sung several days during song time.   

            There should be several copies of The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything around the room, which the children can look at during free play. It would be best to do this unit in the fall, before Halloween, starting on a Monday. Fetherston and England suggest taking a “leaf walk” with students outside the school, or in a nearby neighborhood, to collect and observe the changes in leaves and trees  (53).  After the class returns, the adults can laminate or press the leaves in wax paper for the children.  As a tabletop activity, the children could use yarn and paper plates to make a ‘leaf mobile’ to take home.  Any tabletop activity involves social skills, such as sharing, asking for help, and waiting one’s turn. Focus on task is also important. This activity would address both Benchmarks A and C. 

            At circle time, the book could be read, with pauses for speculation on what could happen next, and discussion and pointing out examples of the objects pictured in the book.   

Second Day   

The tabletop activity could involve assembling and gluing onto a large piece of paper all the elements from the story (pumpkin head, shirt, gloves, hat, pants, shoes) to make a scarecrow for each child to take home.  The idea and purpose of scarecrows could be discussed, complete with illustrations and class input.  Has anyone ever seen a scarecrow, or made one?   

            During the story reading, the children could take turns guessing what article of clothing comes next, and join with the teacher in making the sound that it makes in the story, as well as repeating the old lady’s line, “I’m not afraid of you!”   

                 Discussion about what kind of things scare the class could follow, and what’s good to do when you’re scared.  This could be the start of a unit on safe people and what to do in an emergency.  Students could be informed about when to call 911 and who are safe people to approach for help.  This is a very valuable discussion for children who are likely to be in unsafe situations.  They could practice calling the ambulance or police on the toy phone, with an adult’s help.  Benchmark A calls for using communication to foster needs, and this activity would address this area.   

            Snack could be bread circles with cheese spread or peanut butter, to simulate pumpkins, which the children could then make faces on with raisins or black olive slices for eyes, shredded carrot or miniature marshmallows for teeth, and sprouts for hair.   

            The class could also assemble a scarecrow and put it up outdoors to see if it really does scare birds away.  This could also become a useful unit on self-care, particularly dressing.  Since it will probably be cool outdoors when this unit is done, children could practice putting on their sweaters and jackets before going outside to play.   

Third Day   

A field trip to a corn maze, pumpkin patch, or roadside truck farm could be taken.   Children should have a chance to walk in fields and see firsthand where produce comes from, to buy and taste fresh apples and apple cider, and to buy pumpkins which will be used for the pumpkin carving activity with their parents later in the curriculum.   Time should be spent talking about the different sizes, shapes, and colors of the produce.  Photos of the plants, produce, and children should be taken and made into a poster that can be used for discussion in later sessions.  There would be multiple opportunities for children to interact with others, in a variety of settings, as Benchmark C states.   

Fourth Day   

At the beginning of circle time, students can choose from a pile of red, green, or yellow paper laminated apples of assorted sizes.  Each apple has a happy, sad, or mad face on it.  The students can then talk about what size, color, and expression they chose, and why.   The different tastes, colors, and sizes of apples can also be mentioned.  This is not only good practice in communication; it’s helpful in learning self-awareness.   

            This would be a good day to have the students smell and taste a selection of the “herbs and spices, nuts and seeds” that the old lady in the story sets out to gather (Williams 3).   Aromatic spices could be passed around in small containers (to help avoid the temptation to eat them) and students could learn to identify and taste sunflower seeds, peanuts, walnuts, etc.  This activity would dovetail with the pumpkin seeds that the children will be working with later in the unit.   

            When the class reads the story, each student should be handed an article of clothing to shake at the appropriate time, and then make the noise that that piece of clothing makes, so that everyone has a part in the story (Fetherston and England 45).   

            For snack time, the children could make applesauce or “apple pies” out of sliced and sweetened apples (from the truck stand they visited the previous class) and packaged crescent roll dough.  The cooking activity will provide practice in following directions, sharing, and fine motor skills.  Seeing an apple go from the tree to the pie is a valuable lesson in action and consequences.    

Fifth Day   

When the story is read, the children can choose which article of clothing they want to represent, and be responsible for remembering the order the clothing appears in the story.  This not only helps auditory and visual memory; it also helps establish a schema that can be used when the child is dressing each morning.   

            The children will carve pumpkins with their parents, the parents (or other adults) doing all the knife work, and the children helping to design the face on their pumpkin.  A few of the seeds should be cleaned, dried, and reserved for planting later.  The rest should be cleaned and salted, then roasted or dried for snack later in the week.  The classroom staff should be available to help facilitate functional interaction between those parent-student pairs that are having trouble.   This is an excellent opportunity for students to use their words to let their parents know what they want, and to encourage the parents not to respond until the child has given them the highest level of communication of which they are capable.  So many parents respond to pointing or a grunt, as they know what their child wants, but this does not help the student to increase her communication skills. 

             This would be a wonderful time to incorporate likes and dislikes.  One of the extra pumpkins can be cut up and cooked in the cafeteria oven or in a crock-pot in the classroom.  Some of the cooked pumpkin can then be seasoned with salt and butter, some with cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar, and some with curry and salt and pepper.  The children can take turns tasting and telling the class whether they liked or disliked each pumpkin dish.  The staff can then make a chart with the students’ names on one axis and the differently seasoned pumpkin dishes on the other and use stickers or happy and sad faces to denote who liked which dish.  This activity will help further the children’s understanding of the multiple uses to which one thing can be put.   

Sixth Day   

The children can eat the pumpkin seeds they dried at the last class for snack.   A “reminder” discussion about the field trip and where pumpkins come from can take place.  The poster can be pulled out and used as a visual reminder of what the children did that day.  A few of the dried (but not roasted or salted) pumpkin seeds can be planted so that the children can see the small vines growing and complete the growth cycle.   

            The story can be acted out with students actually playing the old lady walking through the woods (a group of chairs turned upside-down, perhaps) and the various articles which follow her.  Children can be coached in the simple dialogue, and take turns acting out the story as various “characters.”  They should be allowed to run screaming back to the house (a cardboard appliance box with a door cut into the side) and then to confront the scarecrow and settle it in the yard.   

As a tabletop activity, the children could color then cut out jack o’lanterns which have been outlined for them on a sheet of paper.  These could then be glued onto a contrasting sheet and put up around the room.   

Seventh Day   

Children could take turns telling or “reading” the story to the class today, using the book to jog their memories as to the sequence of events.   They might want to dress up as either scarecrows or old ladies.  

There could also be a costume parade around the school as it would be near Halloween.   The children could visit the school office, nurse, or counselor to show off their costumes.  This would be an opportunity for them to use their communication skills to explain and identify their costumes.  Snack today could be tomatoes stuffed with egg salad and little jack 'o'lantern faces cut into the sides.    

Assessment   

I think one of the easiest means of assessment would be to simply have a list of students’ names and have a staff member listen to the children and make a hash mark beside a student’s name when she uses communication to request something, or to express something.  A letter “I” could be used whenever a student initiates, or responds to a communication initiated by another.  This could either be done in five-minute intervals throughout the day, or for an entire activity, particularly a tabletop activity, where there is typically ample opportunity for communication.   There should be a “pre-test” where the communication is measured before the unit starts, and a “post-test” once the fairy tale unit is complete.   

Documentation   

Brostrom, Stig.  “Children’s Stories and Plays:  Storyride—A Children’s Culture                  Project.”  Eighth European Conference on Quality in Early Childhood Education. Santiago de Compostela, Spain.  2-5 Sept.  1998.    

A paper describing the stories dictated by children in several European countries.   

Church, Ellen Booth.  “Sharing Personal Stories.”  Scholastic Early Childhood Today 15  (2001):               64-5.   

Several techniques to use with preschoolers in facilitating structured sharing from their own experience.   

Collins-Standley, Tracy, Su-lin Gan, Hsin-ju Yu.  “Choice of Romantic, Violent, and Scary        
            Fairy-tale Books by Preschool Girls and Boys.”  Child Study Journal   26 (1996):    
            279-302.         

A description of a study conducted in a preschool classroom where children were asked to choose between a book cover depicting a violent scene, a romantic scene, or a scary scene.    

Gardner, Howard.  Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice.  New York:  Basic Books, 1993. 

           An exposition of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences with practical applications.   

Hedemann, Kathy, et al.  Performance Standards and Benchmarks For Three and Four Year                Old Children.  New Mexico:  The Early Childhood Network, Center for Development and                Disability, University of New Mexico, 1999. 

                  Description of the state standards for three- and four-year-olds. 

 

Merrefield, Gayle Emory.  “Three Billy Goats and Gardner.”  Educational Leadership   55  (1997)                  :  58-61. 

Description of a four-month curriculum unit which is strengths-based, and which significantly increased the length and complexity of students’ utterances. 

Oldhaver, Dorothy.  “Preludes to Writing in Early Childhood.”  Montessori Life 13  (2001):  36-7. 

                 Examples of stories dictated by typically developing preschoolers.  

Storybook Based Curriculum.  Hearing and Speech Institute.  Videotape.  1998.  

A short videotape describing the philosophy and showing an example of a story-based preschool classroom for children with special needs.    

Tatar, Maria, Ed.  The Classic Fairy Tales.  New York:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1999. 

Contains several variations of some of the best-known fairy tales, including some with   empowered and female protagonists. 

Werner, Lorna S.  “A Preschool Program to Stimulate Language Development among High-risk               Children.”  Educational Horizons 76  (1998):  87-91.   

An article describing a six-week summer project with economically disadvantaged and developmentally delayed children aged 2-12.   

Zipes, Jack.  Creative Storytelling.  New York:  Routledge, 1995.    

Contains ideas for using storytelling in the classroom, with the students as tellers, actors, artists, and authors.  Targets ages 6-10.   

Zipes, Jack.  “Spells of Enchantment.”  Folk and Fairy Tales.  Ed. Martin Hallett and Barbara               Karasek.  Ontario, Canada:   Broadview Press, 1996.  370-92. 

             An article discussing the genesis of literary fairy tales from the oral tradition. 

Teacher resources 

Boyle, Virginia A.  Facets Non-Violent, Non-Sexist Children’s Video Guide.   Illinois:  U.S.,                 1996. 

   A description of over 800 videotapes screened for gender bias and violent content. 

Cummings, Renee.  Story Starters and Patterns for…3-D Pop-Out Books.   Grand Rapids, MI:               Instructional Fair, Inc.   

                 Patterns for making three-dimensional simple “books” for classroom use. 

Fetherston, Kate, Kate Brady England.  Storybook Based Curriculum.  Portland OR: Hearing and              Speech Institute, 1998. 

A description of twelve three-week story-based units for preschoolers with special needs.

Hernandez, Catherine.  Literature Notes for The Three Little Pigs. Torrance, CA: Frank Shaffer               Publications, Inc.,  1994.  

            Writing, coloring and cutting activities. 

Packard, Mary.  The Shy Scarecrow.  New York:  Scholastic, 2001.  

A preschool-grade 1 story about a scared scarecrow and how he finds courage with the help of a tin hat. 

Whitley, Lisa K.  “Snow White and the Seven Hansels.”  School Library Journal  46  (2000):  46. 

  A description of software which allows students to use elements from traditional fairy     tales as well as modern choices to write their own fairy tales. 

Williams, Linda.  The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything.  New York: Scholastic               Inc, 1986.   

A short tale where an old woman goes into the woods and several animated articles of clothing try unsuccessfully to scare her.  She resolves the conflict by making the clothes into a scarecrow.