Comparing and Contrasting Stories with Venn Diagrams

Venn diagrams are a very useful tool to help kids learn to compare and contrast. Since we're in our fairytale themed week  we've been reading lots of stories! We've got a book called Once Upon a Time with some great versions of many popular tales that we've been sticking to for this week, but we've also got some Disney books with collections of some tales as well. I wanted my daughter to see that there can be multiple versions of one story so we read both books version of "The Little Mermaid."

After we finished reading I decided that we should make a venn diagram so we could list out the differences and similarities together. Yes, Charlie is only two years old but it's very important for kids to get used to seeing that things are written out a lot in life. It helps with literacy skills overall, expanding vocabulary, spelling, sight word recognition, and like I said just getting used to the fact that we live in a print-rich environment. So, we did this on our big dry erase board.

Note: Not claiming that my handwriting was perfect, as I was writing pretty quickly.

It was actually a fun thing to do as well as very educational. I asked my daughter provoking questions about the stories to get her thinking. I explained how when you list something on one side of the venn diagram it's good to list something similar that's different/the opposite on the other side. And of course how the things that are in the same in both cases goes in the middle. Doing this also helps with reading comprehension skills. You might be surprised at how much your little one will remember from stories you read to them.

Three Good Fairies Bath Paints

Anybody remember the three good fairies from Disney's Sleeping Beauty?

Well, since we're in our fairytale themed week this week I decided I would make bath time a little more fun by making a few different colors of bath paint to represent the three good fairies. 

Flora bath paint:

Squirt some shaving cream into a small dish or a section of a muffin tin. Add in a few drops of red food coloring and mix in with a makeup brush or paint brush. 

Merryweather bath paint:

Squirt some shaving cream into a small dish or section of a muffin tin. Add in a few drops of blue or neon blue food coloring and mix in with a makeup brush or paint brush.

Fauna bath paint:

Squirt some shaving cream into a small dish or section of a muffin tin. Add in a few drops of green or neon green food coloring and mix in with a makeup brush or paint brush.

When you make them all together at one time you've got Three Good Fairies Bath Paints!

I put them out near the tub, which I had filled with water and added a few drops of neon pink food coloring too. I made the water pink since that is the color of Princess Aurora's gown in Sleeping Beauty. So the bath in all represents Princess Aurora and her three good fairies.

When all the colors of paint were used together they made beautiful bathtub masterpieces!

What Makes a Fairytale Word Wall

We usually do word walls on our bulletin board for each theme that we do, so this week is no different. Except, I didn't exactly just put up words, this one had a lot more to it.

I used white paper and markers. The title or in the case the question/topic was "What Makes a Fairytale?"
So of course I asked my daughter what she thinks of when I say "fairytale" and I wrote down a bullet-pointed list of what she said with "Comes to mind...." as the heading. She named some of her favorite characters.

I also made some one that said "Once Upon A Time" with the word "once" underlined. I did this to discuss how a fairytale usually starts. Sometimes the whole familiar phrase is used, but sometimes just the "once" part is, or even another sentence all together.

Another one that said "Happily Ever After" to signify how a fairytale commonly ends. This was placed at the end of the board for that reason.

Another one that said "Good People" with another "comes to mind" bulleted list that my daughter helped me make.

Another one that said "Evil People/"Bad Guys"" with another "comes to mind" bulleted list that my daughter helped me make.

Another one that said "Fictional or "make believe""

Another one that said "Morals or lessons"

Another one that said "Sometimes There's Magic" with another "comes to mind" bulleted list that my daughter helped me make.

They were all tacked up in an order that made sense and will be discussed daily throughout this themed week.

Rapunzel's Magic Golden Flower Bath Paint

Like I mentioned before in my Tower Craft post, this week is our fairytale themed week AND my daughters been obsessed with Tangled lately. Sooo when making some regular old purple bath paint last night I got this great idea! I wanted to make the bath paint look like those little purple flag things from the movie with the yellow sun/magic flower shape on them. They're pretty significant since Rapunzel herself is looking at one when she realizes she's the lost princess.

My daughter LOVED seeing my rendition of this in her bath paint, and when she used it the two colors worked beautifully together.

To create it yourself you'll need:
- shaving cream
- a plastic dish
- makeup brush or paint brush
- neon purple food coloring
- yellow food coloring

Step 1: Squirt the desired amount of shaving cream into the container.
Step 2: Squirt in some of the neon purple food coloring and mix that in with the brush until all the shaving cream is colored.
Step 3: Rinse off the brush and squirt a dollop of shaving cream onto it. It should be big enough that you can plop it right in the middle of your already made purple bath paint in the container.
Step 4: Take your brush and carefully (as not to turn it purple) smooth out the dollop of new white shaving cream and drag out some lines like slightly curvy rays of the sun.
Step 5: Add just a few drops of yellow food coloring into the center of the sun shape. If you use too much it'll end up orange. Now, take the brush again and do like you did with the shaving cream in step 4, but to spread around the yellow color.
Step 6: Present to child and let them enjoy.

Tower Craft Designing Your Own

This week at our house the home school theme is all things fairytale. We decided to kick off this themed week with a craft: designing your own tower. This was especially great for Charlie, seeing as she's been obsessed with Tangled lately.

You'll need:
- A sheet of paper to be the background (we used white)
- Construction paper (we used pink)
- Glue stick
- Scissors
- Stickers, regular or craft foam
- Glitter glues
- Other options could be crayons, colored pencils, gel pens, markers, tempera paints, etc.

I let Charlie pick out what color she wanted her tower to be and of course she chose pink! We had also got out some purple, thinking that maybe there'd be two colors to the tower, but she ended up sticking with pink for all of it.

Now, I asked her if she remembered what Rapunzel's tower looked like and what shape she thought the big part ought to be and she correctly said rectangle. I let her cut out the rectangle shape freehand but you may want to draw the outline of yours first. We used the glue stick to paste it down, and then talked about what shape the top part should be.

 We decided on a triangle with some curve, definitely a pointy top though. Once that shape was cut out I asked her if she wanted me to cut a window out in it, she did, so I did. We glued that on and then it was time to decorate the tower!

Charlie wanted to use some craft foam heart stickers that we had leftover from Valentine's Day. So she got to use her fine motor skills to peel the backs off the stickers and adhere them to her tower.

Next came the glitter glues. We've got some big bottles and little bottles.

 She always squirts a big glob out and then spreads it around with her finger(s) or a small piece of scrap paper. She used purple and blue on the tower. Silver on the left side of the background, light green on the right side of the background, and dark green for some grass along the bottom.


I think it turned out beautifully!