Cinderella in Review!!

We have finished our Cinderella unit! We had so much fun and it really led to a whole new chapter in our homeschooling. I am feeling much more comfortable now and we are enjoying going with the girl's delight. I no longer feel I have to do everything that is suggested -- although in this case it was odd since I was the one who wrote the unit!

During this unit we read Charles Perrault's classic version of Cinderella (you can read it online here), the Disney tale, Cinderella at the Ball,which is a beginning-to-read book, and What is a Princess?, which is a Disney princess step 1 book.

We read Madeline and Crepes by Suzette for further exploration and learning about France, and we made crepes using the recipe in the back of the book! That was fun and they came out really good.... not at all nutritional as we liked the idea one of the characters had about chocolate filling (yum!), but very good! We read Winnie the Pooh Tells Time and Spot Tells the Time for exploring more about telling time (Cinderella had to leave the ball by midnight, you know!).

For Bible, we read from The Jesus Storybook Bible about Joseph. This tied in very nicely with the Perrault version of Cinderella because in the end, Cinderella forgives her step-sisters. And we read from Big Thoughts from Little People about Forgiveness and Kindness.

We watched Cinderella I, II, and III, Cinderella and more beloved fairy tales by Scholastic video, Madeline, the best episodes ever and Rock 'n learn: Telling Time.

Just for fun we had the Daddy/Daughter royal ball, we explored dance on youtube and other sources, and listened to orchestra instruments (that was a delight directed experience formed from watching the dancing!). And finally, we did some of the lapbook components shown throughout this post. Again, since I created the thing, you would think we would have done ALL of it, but right now they are going through a "not feeling like coloring" mood, oh well! The important thing is that we had fun AND I got over my fears and wrote my first unit AND I figured out how to do more than just a basic file folder fold (see that extra section with cardstock taped in... pretty nifty for this newbie!) I do plan on printing out pictures from the ball and adding them to the lapbook as well.

Now that Cinderella is over, we will begin Sleeping Beauty, which is based on the Illustrated Book of Ballet Stories. This is such an AWESOME book! It goes through the ballet, in story form, of Sleeping Beauty (and many others) and shows pictures of the ballerinas themselves, as well as explaining the steps and information about the ballet in the margins! It has illustrated basic ballet steps in the front as well! To go along with it I have a video from the library called How to be a Ballerina, which is an instructional video from the Royal Academy of Dance for preschoolers based on The Sleeping Beauty!!! How fun is that?!? (oh and if you read my Green Hour Challenge, you also know that we will be studying about dandelions and BUGS... doesn't that go so well with ballerinas? HA!)