This week was all about the Bears… 3 of them!

Long hair story? Check! Amphibian tale? Check!

Onward to carnivorous woodland animals!

But first…

MOTHER CULTURE
This week wasn’t a normal week, in the fact that there was both a national holiday AND a play date in it… so I didn’t get as much time to listen to podcasts or read as I wanted. Mainly, I spent a few minutes here and there in the Flip to Fun-Schooling book. I found the “Emotion and Discovery” part interesting, as I feel it details why story is so incredibly good at teaching: a well-crafted tale both expresses and fosters feelings while plot surprises and characters teach truth. I like the following excerpt (and found it to overlap an idea that I also enjoyed from Bogart’s The Brave Learner):

“When a child is discovering new information, try to help them to learn in an emotional way so they will have a stronger memory of the information. Toss out learning materials that are lifeless and dull; they are not worth the time and investment. If you must use dull learning materials, play happy music in the background, add colors to the worksheets, and eat a yummy snack… The emotional stimulation will spark memory. If your child is bored and dreads school time, something is wrong with the method.” (Sarah Janisse Brown)

I also spent time this week creating, since I’m participating in a craft swap during the weekend. Sometimes Mother Culture isn’t just fulfilling your own need for knowledge, but also your need to invest in your interests and creative side, too. 🙂

Alright, Mother Culture done! Let’s move on to our week!

Like I mentioned before, this week was different because of our schedule, so we had 3 days of Three Bear fun instead of the four days like the other fairy tales so far. But hey, 3 bears… 3 days. It works.

DAY ONE
This day, we read the original Three Bears story– which doesn’t even have Goldilocks in it! Instead of a cute little girl with golden curls, we have a old hag. Fun fact: Goldilocks didn’t show up in the story until 12 years after the first published version of the story was printed. Also, the three bears are still very different in size as “a Little, Small, Wee Bear … a Middle-sized Bear … and a Great, Huge Bear,” but were not Mama, Papa, and Baby Bear. They were three (presumably male) bears with no known relation.

Something that E found humorous but also judged pretty harshly was the fact that the old woman cussed. Now, the story doesn’t come out and actually give any words… but when the woman broke into the bears’ home and ate a bite of cold porridge, she “said a bad word” at it’s temperature… and did the same when she got to the middle bowl. When she ate the smallest bowl of appropriately cooled porridge, she ate it, but then said a bad word anyway, because the bowl was too small and she wanted more. Just saying that the woman said a bad word (without saying an actual one) was shocking to E, and sealed the deal in her mind that the woman was bad– as if peeking in the windows and breaking in a house didn’t make her suspect already. Ha!

On day one, we also went ahead and had our movie time. The past couple of weeks we have used Disney’s versions for the cinema portion of our fairy tale week, but since there is no animated feature-length one, we decided on The Faerie Tale’s Theatre version.

I had perused it earlier in the week, and was resigned to the fact that E and Jbuddy was probably not going to find it as enthralling as a Disney movie, but I was soooo wrong. They both didn’t move for the almost 50 minute live version of this tale! So there you go! We found the whole thing on YouTube and Amazon. You can definitely tell it is an older flick, not just because of the fact it looks very VHS-ey (I just made that an adjective, I think), but because John Lithgow has brown hair!

DAY TWO
We did a little variation of what we have done in the weeks past. Instead of doing different country’s/culture’s versions, we pulled a few modern adaptations to read and get inspired by!

I’ll go in reverse-favorite order.

I used my Scribd account to pull up the most modern of the versions, Believe Me, Goldilocks Rocks! In this version, Goldilocks and Sam (the baby bear) are friends, and social media takes a strong front seat as the reason why Goldilocks broke into the house. She was dared to do so by Red Riding Hood, and uses selfies as proof that she ate oatmeal, sat in chairs, etc. My 6 year old liked the friendship twist to this story, and I see the merit in the talking about point of view (as the story was told by Baby Bear), but overall, I thought the moral tone and the actual tone left much to be desired.

On to a much better version!

I found Somebody and the Three Blairs to be delightful! The human Blair family takes the place of the traditional bears, and a curious bear makes its way into *their* home instead.

The swaps are clever and E enjoyed seeing the bear try and figure out the human surroundings while staying consistent to the Three Bear structure.

If you don’t have the book but want to hear the story, there are several YouTube clips available to “read” it, including this one!

Last, but not least, is Mo Willem’s version Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. E LOVES Mo Willem’s books, and definitely enjoys his collection of easy readers with Elephant and Piggie. She can read them on her own, and loves the comic-booklike speech bubbles. She reads the books like a play, and does her own character voices, even if she hesitant to read other books independently right now.

Personally, I find Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs to be brilliant. The illustrations have several jokes woven throughout the scenes, and the narrator is so incredibly funny (we’d expect nothing less from Willem). The thing I love the most: the moral. It is stated at the end of the story, when Goldilocks realizes she is definitely NOT at a bear’s house, so she escapes out the back door.

“If you find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”

THAT.

THAT!

Isn’t that a moral that we want our kids to know and believe and live by? At six, at sixteen, at 26, at 66??? It is never too late to leave something that is wrong and run towards what you know is right. I love it!

Again, if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading it yourself, YouTube can help you out. This reading is great, because she actually points out some of the illustration gems.

I intended to do a Three Bears STEM/craft project on this day, but didn’t get around to it. If you want to, though, be my guest! I’d love to see the results in the comments! 🙂

DAY THREE
On this morning, Jbuddy wanted in on some Three Bears action and wanted something sensory… so I poured out some uncooked bear breakfast and gave him a scoop– after washing his hands, of course. 🙂 He loves being an excavator, and had a blast. Once he was done and moved on to another thing, E had to get in on the action.

We wrapped up the week with a Mommy/Daughter writing date. I wasn’t able to swing it last time, but was glad I was able to this week. We went and got a treat and drinks and played a game before doing the fun work of writing.

The game was actually to cement b/d identification, which she has down pretty well at this point. It’s an easy flash card-type game to do and is based off of memory. We had a stack of b’s and d’s, and then a bunch of cards with pictures on them, facedown. You turn up a card and the picture needs to begin with the same sound as the letter you have. If it doesn’t, you turn the card back over and remember it for when you have a different letter.

The game came from The Good and the Beautiful’s K LA book. I have two copies of the book the game came from: the beautiful one they sent, and the one I had printed off cheaply for her to do all the actual work in. The game’s cards would be MUCH better quality if I had cut them from the book that was sent, and not the cheap one, but it doesn’t matter. Note: if you are interested in The Good and the Beautiful’s LA curriculum, you can download it FOR FREE from levels 1-5, which is amazing! Even if you are looking for a strong supplement and don’t want to use the whole thing, you can’t argue with free!

After the game, we got down to writing. She decided that her name would be subbed for Goldilock’s… so I was a bit disappointed that the parents died by sentence 3. (Well then.) I have to give it to her… it definitely makes Goldilock’s a much more sympathetic character that way. The bears came home right after E ate the porridge, which caused her to bypass the chairs, drink Papa bear’s drink that was sitting on the stairs, before hiding in the bedroom upstairs.

Each week, there is a part of the story she is writing that I can’t help but almost laugh outloud at… that’s if I manage to keep it in. This week’s moment was when Papa Bear goes up the stiars by himself to check out the intruder situation, and realizes that someone has taken a drink out of his cup on the stair.

He gets angry and declares, “Somebody has been drinking my drink!” with such passion that Momma Bear comes and said (and a quote) “Come now! Take a deep breath, honey!” HA! (Note: if this were an accurate portrayal of real life, it would have been the Momma Bear’s drink that would have been drunk because mothersaren’tallowedtohavedrinkswithouteachchildtaking15sipsapiece. At least in my house.)

The story ends with Papa and Momma Bear carrying E to another person’s house that conveniently is her aunt. So E lives with her aunt and uncle and cousin and live happily ever after, the end.

You can see a pic of E being carried away from the Bear’s abode and eventually to her aunt’s…

So, even though we didn’t get all I wanted to done, it was still a great week! I have another awesome original E wonder story to add to my collection.

Next stop? Wonder week 4!