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This summer, try telling mixed-up fairy tales for your family artists dates, road trips, plane trips, camping trips, bedtime, and even waiting rooms.
Think of three different fairy tales and pick one from each – a character, a setting, and a plot.
Mix it all together in your own imaginative way and voila — you have a mixed-up fairy tale. You are now a storyteller. 
For example:
CHARACTER: Goldilocks
SETTING: in a candy house
PLOT: big bad wolf wants to blow her house down
Hmmm . . . what will happen when these three story elements are combined? It’s up to you, the storyteller, to decide.
Here’s a printable list of fairy tale characters, settings and plots you can cut up and mix up. I’ve done this with my writing classes and it’s lots of fun. The more you practice telling stories, the better the stories get. Write down your best stories down and illustrate them as picture books.
Fairy Tale Characters, Settings and Plots
Mix and Stir for a Good Story
| Cinderella | House with three stepsisters and stepmom and castle | Fairy godmother gives heroine a night at the ball. The prince falls in love with her and they get married. |
| Hansel and Gretel | Forest / candy house | Kids in the woods find a witch’s house made of candy. Witch kidnaps them but the kids escape back to the father and find that the mean stepmom is gone. |
| Jack | House, beanstalk, Giant’s castle | Sells a cow for magic beans, plants beans that grow into a beanstalk that reaches the sky where a giant lives, Jack steals the giant’s golden harp, goose – cuts the beanstalk and lives happily ever after. |
| REAL Princess | Castle | Prince seeks a “real” princess who must pass his test and feel a pea under 20 mattresses. One feels the pea. The prince marries her. |
| The Gingerbread Man | Kitchen, town and river | Woman bakes gingerbread man who escapes from her and runs out of the house. He runs away from everyone he meets until a clever fox who offers to carry the man on his back across the river. When they’re in the river, the fox eats the g. man. |
| Snow White | forest | Evil step mom wants to kill heroine so she escapes to the house of 7 dwarfs where she lives until the evil stepmom poisons her with an apple. Heroine falls into a deep sleep and is woken by her true love, the prince. |
| Little Red Riding Hood | Forest / cottage | Little girl with red cape takes treats to her grandmother in the woods. She’s followed by a bad wolf who runs ahead, eats the grandma and pretends to be the grandma. The girl is puzzled by the grandma’s changes and just as the wolf tries to eat her, she’s saved by a woodcutter who kills the wolf. |
| Rapunzel | Tall tower | Girl imprisoned by evil witch. She grows her hair long for the witch to climb. A handsome prince climbs her hair, too. They fall in love and eventually escape to live happily ever after. |
| Three Little Pigs | Straw house, stick house, brick house, fireplace | Three pigs each build their own house, one of straw, one of sticks, one of bricks. When the wolf comes to each house, he tries to blow it down so he can eat the pig. He can’t blow down the brick house with all three pigs inside. |
image: Some rights reserved by Krystn Palmer Photography
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Melissa Taylor is a mom and educator from Denver who is passionate about playful learning. Thanks for visiting the site!
7 Comments
Oh, I love this idea! We will be going on a roadtrip tomorrow and this is just perfect! Thanks for sharing. My printers not working, so I’ll have to wing it, but I can handwrite some cards.
Take Care!
Jen
This is perfect timing! We’re getting ready to drive from Washington to Wyoming, and this will be a fun way to fill some time. I’ll add this to my road trip post for next week. Thanks, Melissa!
Jen and Erin –
Hope your road trips are fun!
For any dads participating, the dad version adds smells (and farts) to the stories. Cindersmella and the three stinky bears is one example. (Hilarious!)
Melissa
I absolutely love this idea!!! In fact, I am currently participating in a book blogging event called Once Upon A Week and am hoping you wouldn’t mind if I wrote a quick summary for the event and refer them on over here to you and your awesome printable list! Would you mind? Feel free to email me at tiftalksbooks at gmail dot com if you have questions for me!
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