Looking Back: Ancient Greece – Aesop’s Fables

Continuing with my  series ‘Looking Back’, where I am documenting learning the children and I did together prior to me blogging, this post is all about the Aesop’s Fables.  We did Ancient Greece about two years ago, when the children were about 8 and A was about 2 and B didn’t exist yet!

First I had the children make up a quick note page about Aesop.  Given how little we know about him, it really was quick:

My goal when learning about Aesop and his infamous fables was to utilise their simplicity and teach the children how to spin a good yarn!  The IEW curriculum (which we used briefly at that time) taught this really well.  First the children had to rewrite the fables in their own words and then when they were proficient at doing that, they substituted different characters or settings into the story.  The essence of the fable remained the same but the children were able to play around with details.  This allowed my early writers the confidence of having a story in front of them, with the creativity to recreate something slightly different.  It worked well for us and the children rewrote copious amounts of these stories.  For examples of stories when they changed the characters or played around with the story line, see my Ancient China post.  I am sharing the simple rewrite here, the ones I enjoyed the most from each child:

Together we rewrote one of the most well known fables and turned it into a play, which the children then acted out for us: The Tortoise and the Hare.  I’m sharing the play here, but I am unable to find any photos of the play being acted out, costumes and all!  I know I took some, but am so disorganised that I seem to have mislaid them somewhere in the vortex that is my home!  Here is the play:

And that was that.  A short post for once!