Sleeping Beauty and the Wooden Spoon Princess Puppet Craft
I recently decided to read a much beloved classic - Sleeping Beauty - with my 4 year-old non-native-speaker girl-student:) We had a lot of fun flipping through the pages and admiring the gorgeous illustrations.
The book came equipped with a page full of stickers - this was certainly a nice addition! I would have loved more picture-stickers which would consider the teaching goals of each particular page, but that's just a side-note (ahh, the 'teacher syndrome' kicking in ;).
Obviously, when teaching with the help of books, you need to clearly set out what the teaching goals are. For me, it was important that my student learnt how to name the characters in the story: King, queen, princess, good fairy, bad fairy, prince, man, woman, boy, girl.
We read the book, sticking the picture stickers on the pages, repeating the words and pointing to them (engaging indeed!). And towards the end of the fairy-tale my student was able to point at the correct pictures (passive knowledge) and even was able to name characters correctly (active knowledge). Yay!
Then, in order to make the characters come to life we embarked on the creative adventure of making the necessary props.
I think this is the best part of stories: when we can actually engage with the characters and see them come alive!!
This activity was fantastic to develop concentration and fine motor skills:
cutting, gluing, drawing, colouring, stapling were all involved.
...and the best thing is my student was incredibly engaged, very proud of her accomplishment and it was a fabulous new toy for her to play with! This is how we made our very own Spoon-Sleeping-Beauty.
What we needed:
- Wooden spoons
- Toilet paper rolls
- Pipe cleaners
- Cotton wool
- Glue
- Stapler
- Coloured paper
- Colour crayons
- Glitter
- Sparkly stars
- Googly eyes
- Red pen
Step 1: Sleeping Beauty's Crown
Cut a toilet paper roll in half.
Cut out zig-zags around the top and snip the roll on one side (so that it unrolls).
Now colour the crown gold (or yellow:) and staple it about 2 zig-zags in - otherwise its too big to stay put on the princess' spoon head.
Step 2: Sleeping Beauty's Face and Arms
Glue googly eyes onto the spoon, draw nose and mouth with a pen and add cotton-wool on top of head as hair. You can glue the hair to make sure it stays - otherwise when you add the crown, it will be small enough to stay put on the head:)
For the arms: Twist a pipe-cleaner around the head of the spoon to create two arms
Step 4: Sleeping Beauty's Dress
Cut out 2 triangles out of coloured paper and cover one side of each triangle with glue. Add to spoon in order to create a paper dress, which you can then decorate at hearts desire!
Et Voila! A beautiful princess hand-made by your child awaits for countless hours of fun!
I was amazed to see just how engaged my student was! We even did a roll-play, where she actively asked questions and responded to questions in full sentences (which was quite hard to achieve until now!). I can't stress enough how role-play supports the process of learning languages BUT it needs to be done in a natural and spontaneous way!
It was an absolutely magical activity. Up next: Crowns and wands to consolidate the knowledge of fairies :)
As I was preparing for my class I took some inspiration from these fabulous sites:
