About this activity
Seven map boxes and three stories to fill them with: who is in the story; where does it happen; what is the problem; what did they try first; what happened next; how was it fixed; how does everyone feel at the end. Then the map gets applied to The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks, and a story about the child's own weekend.
How to use it in a session
Fill the map for a familiar tale first. The Three Little Pigs is known well enough that the child spends their effort on the structure rather than on remembering the plot, which is the point of starting there. The weekend story at the end is where the structure has to be applied to material with no ready-made shape, and it is much harder — save it for when the fairy tales are easy. Ten minutes per story.
What to listen for
Watch the tried-first box, which most children leave empty or fill with the solution. In The Three Little Pigs the first two houses are the failed attempts, and a child who jumps to the brick house has told a shorter story than the one they heard. Notice the feeling box, which is the other reliable gap.
Carrying it home
Seven boxes on a sheet of paper works with any bedtime story. Filling two or three of them aloud, without writing, takes a minute and builds the same structure.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Kindergarten through third grade, as early narrative structure work.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all ten cards play with no account.
- Why use familiar fairy tales?
- Because the plot is already known, so all the effort goes into the structure rather than into remembering what happened. It also makes the missing elements obvious to the child as well as to you.