This week, the children began a unit on fairy tales. The morning news asked, “What do you know about fairy tales?” The children brainstormed a list of characteristic elements of fairy tales, which included, magical powers, castles, dragons, princesses, talking animals, giants, witches and trolls. The children will be exploring fairy tales and ethical characters as they trace the virtues of honesty and confidence in fairy tales over the next several weeks.In order to gain an understanding of story sequencing and character development, the children retold familiar fairy tales using masks and costumes. Retelling familiar stories is an essential building block for developing oral language and story sense. The process of retelling not only shows what the listener remembers, but also what they understood. The particular fairy tales that were chosen had repetitive and language, which facilitated the retelling of the stories.