Storytelling: Adventures with Folk Tales

By Nandini Bhattacharjya, Head Teacher, and Betsy Koning, Teacher 

Young children love to listen to stories, and as early childhood teachers, we realize the value of quality children’s literature and the many ways it can be used to enhance children’s learning.  


“The ability to engage children in a story so deeply that they adopt its literary language, explore the motivation of the characters, try out multiple ways of being in a character’s role is effective in promoting children’s literacy and language growth,” writes early literacy scholar Lea McGee in her essay “Book Acting: Storytelling and Drama in the Early Childhood Classroom,” which appears in the book Literacy and Young Children: Research-Based Practices. Thoughtfully choosing a book, offering opportunities for repeated readings of a story and providing props that can be used to represent the characters and objects in the tale help set the stage for this type of exploration. When delving deeply into stories with young children, we offer them chances to play the parts of characters, encourage them to verbalize their interpretations of the narrative, allow them to create alternate endings or even spin a unique tale using their own imagination.


With all of this in mind, the teachers in West AM chose to explore folk tales in our classroom this year, introducing children to a different folk tale at story time each week. After all, folk tales often have a gripping storyline and compelling characters that captivate young listeners. We hoped exposure to the tales would help children develop their understanding of a narrative form (including a beginning, middle and end), cultivate vocabulary, build listening skills and stimulate their imaginations. Studying these tales would also provide opportunities to build children’s language comprehension, sequencing and vocabulary—all important pre-reading and writing skills. As anticipated, children in our class were intrigued by characters like Goldilocks from The Three Bears, the troll from The Three Billy Goats Gruff, the mischievous title character of Rumpelstiltskin, the hard-working Little Red Hen and the wolves from The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. 


To encourage the children’s investigation of these stories, we set out miniature versions of scenes from the tales along with items that could represent characters and relevant props. For example, spools of golden thread like Rumpelstiltskin’s and three differently sized bowls like those Goldilocks encountered allowed the children to have hands-on experiences with the stories during free play. Sometimes children played out the storylines with their peers, taking on the role of their favorite character. We also provided a slightly more structured way for children to act out the stories: staging them as brief plays at story time. Children really enjoyed sharing the stories as plays and confidently delivered repeated phrases from the stories, like “Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” Furthermore, we capitalized on areas of our classroom environment that lent themselves to the retelling of certain tales. For example, The Three Billy Goats Gruff was enacted on our West Room bridge, which lent a great deal of authenticity to the activity and made the story come to life for the children. 

One morning, Johnny built a bridge out of unit blocks and narrated a new tale. He was one of several children who had begun to invent tales inspired by the original story. In Johnny’s story, the smallest billy goat gets “caught in the crack of the bridge,” and his parents, the bigger goats, save him. Luna told a story in the sand area about three pigs crossing a bridge. The pigs encountered a monster that lived under the bridge. After wrapping up her story, she smiled and said, “My story is a little bit like the Three Billy Goats story, but it’s not the same.” Other original story characters emerged during the children’s dramatic play, like a “Spiderman wolf” and a “cautionary fairy” but the new stories retained elements of folk tales, such as a challenge to overcome and a repeated catchphrase.


After teachers introduced musical refrains of some of the stories’ catchphrases, we were impressed to see that, with a little practice, children were able to sing and play these short tunes on small xylophones and use them when retelling the stories. The children also began to sing the refrains spontaneously at times. For instance, one morning Sky brought a live fish to school, and as the children gathered around the fishbowl to see the small visitor, Oliver had some questions: “What is the fish’s name? Is his name Clown Fish?... Is his name Angel Fish?” Sky answered, “That is not his name!” thereby recreating the interaction between the queen and the title character in Rumpelstiltskin. This became a fun game for the group that had gathered in this area, and many children came up with guesses as to the fish’s name and posed questions about whether their conjecture was correct while Sky and a few others responded with “That is not my name!” They used the same phrasing and sing-song tone teachers had introduced at story time. 

children playing xylophone

We continued exploring folk tales by exposing the children to books containing alternate accounts of some of the tales. We worked with the children to identify the similarities and differences between the retellings, making charts to record these findings. The Three Little Pigs is one such tale where we employed this method, and our own Bing library had several versions to choose from. First, we read a traditional telling by James Marshall, in which the first two pigs get gobbled up by the wolf and the third pig outsmarts the antagonist and turns him into soup. This book sparked many conversations throughout the week at the language table. Children commented that they knew a different version in which none of the pigs got eaten up; however, they all seemed to enjoy the version we read. We then set out books telling variations of the tale. Several children requested to read every version of the story each morning before they moved on to another activity. They relished contemplating which kind of house they would build and how they would deal with the wolf. For this folk tale, we brought in books that showed different characters’ perspectives, like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka and The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugenios Trivizas. These humorous takes are similar to the originals, with many enjoyable twists. Olek said he liked these books because it was fun to notice what was different… and how he liked to be surprised that the pig became good. Several children liked the modified refrain of the Three Little Wolves which included “We will not let you in! Not for all the tea leaves in our China teapot!” 


Stories that involve a struggle between good and bad or present a moral—as folk tales tend to do—often include disconcerting characters. As teachers, we felt the folk tales were giving us a unique opportunity to talk to children about scary feelings or daunting moments, especially in a year of feeling uneasy due to COVID-19. We were surprised to see that children were intrigued by each of the characters. We asked children if adults should be allowed to read scary stories to children. They unanimously responded, “Yes!” When pressed to explain why, Joshua said, “because I know that in stories it’s not real, and it’s fun to feel scared for pretend.” Emory agreed and added, “I like hearing stories that are scary because I can think about it in my mind, but I don’t like to watch movies that are scary, because it’s too real.” Several children nodded that they, too, don’t like scary movies. Some insisted that they never feel scared, so they like scary stories. We also found that reading the book several times, adding a song, role playing the characters, talking about the characters or interacting with a doll or puppet version of an antagonistic character whose actions are under the child’s control all helped children cope with an unsettling character. While guiding children as they think about and deal with scary situations in stories, we demonstrated our philosophy that children are competent beings and adults need to see them through that lens. 

Our work with folk tales over the course of the year motivated the children to participate in a variety of pre-literacy activities, provided opportunities for everyone in the class to learn a bit about the culture and history from where each tale originated and inspired creative ways of sharing stories with one another.