Cinderella Writing Project
Have you ever heard the podcast from The Literary Life called Why Read Fairy Tales? It is probably one of the best podcast episodes I’ve ever heard. I’m so drawn to it, I’ve listened to it multiple times and view fairy tales completely different than I used to. I’ve gained a whole new level of spiritual depth and have loved challenging and exploring the stories from a new perspective. If you haven’t heard this, stop and listen to it before you finish this post because it’s so powerful to understand before diving into anything to do with fairy tales.
Last Spring my twins finished up their 4th grade year of Language Arts materials and since we still had a few weeks left in our school year we decided to do a Cinderella writing unit. My brother’s girlfriend is a 4th grade teacher and she gave me the idea so I am giving her all the credit for this cute study! We started by reading lots of different versions of the Cinderella stories and then wrote our own version! It’s a simple project to duplicate, but it does take some time.
Gathering Stories
We started by gathering as many different versions of the Cinderella story as we could. We LOVED reading different versions from around the world so I would put high emphasis on those if you do something similar! We were able to borrow most of our books, but you can check your library or buy used. It was so fun to read all sorts of versions - even ones I wouldn’t normally have been drawn to. It was a mix of beautiful and silly and strange and some not so great ones. Having a big variety opened up some fantastic conversations about what we liked or didn’t like about the writing style or presentation so don’t hesitate to throw a few in there that are less appealing so you can compare and contrast. There were a few that individually appealed to each of my four kids so it made it fun for everyone and it was so nice we could include my kindergartner and preschooler in this study.
Here are the books we used. I put an asterisk next to our top 3 favorites.
The Rough-Face Girl (We didn’t read this because I couldn’t track down a copy we could borrow, but it was highly recommended.)
There are so many more versions out there so if you wanted to add even more you could! I created a collective list on Amazon to help you browse a little quicker…
Before we started reading the books I told the kids we would be writing our own versions of the Cinderella story so to be aware of some ideas and gather inspiration for their own stories. Over a few weeks, we naturally integrated the stories into our morning and evening reading routines. During and after each book we made an effort to discuss the 5 elements of the story - things like the setting and the different characters and perspectives the stories were told through. We talked a lot about plots and problems and resolutions. Every story was so unique yet had a similar storyline so it made it really easy for the kids to see the story elements. We discussed books that rhymed like Cinderella Skeleton and books with visual themes like Yeh-Shen. In the book Dinorella we talked about alliteration which is something my 6 year old seemed to be inspired by when he wrote his own story.
I didn’t make it a priority this go around, but I think it would be SO fun to really dive deep into some of these books and do some crafts or art projects that coordinate with the stories.
Story Writing
After we had lots of inspiration it was time to start working on writing our stories. I had two objectives I was hoping to help my kids with. One, I wanted to see some imagination and creativity. And, let me tell you, this project was full of creativity and I think that was thanks to all the books we read. I loved watching their imaginations evolve. My other objective was to work through the writing process so this is what we focused on:
Prewriting
Drafting
Revision
Editing
Illustration & Publishing
For prewriting, my older twins were able to handwrite all of their ideas independently. They made a bullet list and came up with their setting, possible characters and names, and what some problems might be with unique solutions. I typed up my 6 year old’s ideas. Then, I worked with them individually through the rest of the process.
For our first draft, they each narrated (verbally told me) their story and I typed it for them exactly how they told me. I think this really helped with their creativity because I could keep up while they let all their ideas flow.
Revising the stories took the most time because each of them had a lot of areas that needed work. Things like holes in their stories or ideas that evolved and changed. We revisited the elements of a story and made sure everything flowed well. It was a really good experience. After we got their stories down, we did some editing. The girl’s helped me edit theirs and I did it for my younger son.
Illustrating
Once we had their final draft done, we talked about how they each wanted to illustrate their books. I kept things real simple and added some rectangle boxes on their draft paper and printed it. This way they could do a little sketch of what their page might look like and then we could make sure it coordinated well with the text.
For publication, you could simply print selected sections and have your child illustrate the pages. But, we decided to print our final draft, cut up the story, and glue the sections into these simple bare books because we’ll be adding to these all next school year. I actually left two pages blank at the beginning of the book so they could do a dedication page and a Table of Contents once their books are all filled in.
The last step was illustrating each page. This is also something that can take a few days so help your child be aware of how many pages they want to illustrate. All of my kids kept wanting to put every little thing in the illustrations, but we talked about how they can leave a lot of the story up to the reader’s imagination. I went back and pointed this out in some of the books we had read. So, the kids did a light sketch with their pencils and then colored and filled their pictures in. They outlined some of their drawings with sharpie pens. I love when they do this on special drawings because it makes everything pop and look a little more complete.
Completed Projects
The BEST part of these projects was seeing each of their own personalities and interests come out.
One of my daughters loves animals. All of her characters ended up being a mix of all sorts of animals. She especially loves little snails right now so her Cinderella was named Snailalina. The evil step-sisters were actually nice twin lion sisters. Snailalina and her sisters had to win a race in order to marry the frog prince. With the help of her magical animal friends, Snailalina won the race! But, as she was crossing the finishing line, the prince disappeared leaving behind his crown and Snailalina had to search for him.
My other daughter loves Harry Potter and most of her characters were named after characters in the Harry Potter books. She had twin witch Cinderellas, Heromine and Ginny, who went to a ball at the Big Ben Tower in London. There, two prince brothers, Ron and Harry, danced with the twins and when Big Ben struck midnight, the girls each lost a glass slipper. Her illustrations had a visual theme and it was so fun to see her creativity blossom.
My Kindergartner is obsessed with Star Wars right now so it’s no surprise his story was all about a bright green planet and dark black planet. Luke was Cinderella and Draco and Darko were his evil step-brothers. (I adore how all of my kids put twin characters in their stories. ) Master Yoda was the fairy god-mother and it is the Princess Leia that has to find Luke when his lightsaber falls out of his pouch at the ball.
Anyway, I LOVED how their stories turned out. After I shared about our 4th Grade Year Review a lot of you have been asking what’s next for our 5th Grade Language Arts. We loved this project so much that we are going to be jumping off this and running in a new direction. I’m planning to share all about it next on my blog…
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