I love sharing traditional tales with early elementary students! Often, even the youngest kindergarteners are familiar with these timeless favorites. They get pretty excited when you can tie them into math and literacy stations. In this post, I will share some of my favorite traditional tales centers that can make skill practice more engaging for young kindergarteners and first graders.
There is a long list of traditional tales that you can incorporate into your learning routine. I’m going to touch on nine of my favorites and give you a quick glimpse into some activity ideas that tie in with these folk tales and fables.
Students love the story of the elusive Gingerbread Man!
They can put together pictures of the Gingerbread Man with these self-correcting puzzles. For example, students can match rhyming pictures to practice their phonemic awareness.
The Gingerbread Man’s gumdrops also make the perfect tool for nonstandard measurement! Students can measure a variety of characters and objects from the story using a strip of gumdrops.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears is another classic story that students love!
The three bowls of porridge from the story can help students practice ordering numbers. They can put each task card’s three numbers in numerical order as they write them on the recording sheet.
Papa Bear’s chair can serve as inspiration for this alphabet practice activity. Students will practice identifying and writing both uppercase and lowercase letters.
There are many fun centers activities that can be inspired by the traditional tale of Little Red Riding Hood.
These themed puzzles give students a chance to practice listening for various sound patterns. In this example, students will group puzzle pieces based on the initial sound.
Students can also practice one-to-one correspondence with this number writing activity. Students can roll a die with pictures of characters and objects from the story. Each side of the die has a different number of pictures to count. They will then fill out a recording sheet and see which number’s column gets filled in first.
The story of Hansel and Gretel is also a great option for traditional tales centers.
Students can practice sequencing and retelling by matching each sentence to the correct picture. After putting the cards in order, students can practice retelling the story to a partner.
The characters from traditional tales can also bring a little extra engagement to task card activities. These base ten cards feature Hansel dropping breadcrumbs in each corner.
Jack and the Beanstalk is another traditional tale that’s sure to get your students excited about practicing math and literacy skills!
Students can practice their counting and number sense skills with this dominos game.
These themed sight word cards are also perfect for reading or writing the room. They are also editable so you can use them for targeted practice.
Another great traditional tale to use for centers is The Elves and the Shoemaker.
For this literacy center idea, students can match each elf to the correct shoe by figuring out the beginning sound.
This themed counting activity is also a fun way to incorporate this classic story into math practice. Each task card has a different combination of shoes. Students can count each type of shoe and then write the number of each.
This classic fable can inspire some fun skill practice for your centers routine.
For example, this board game is a fun way to recreate the race between the tortoise and the hare. In this version of the game, students will solve an addition equation that the spinner lands on. This will give them the number of spaces that they will move on the board.
The Little Red Hen is another timeless tale that can bring some extra engagement to your centers activities.
Students can assemble the Little Red Hen and her over with these CVC word puzzles. The pictures make the puzzles self-correcting, which can help students complete this activity more independently during centers time.
For some counting and number identification practice, students can match each hen with the correct loaf of bread. They will do this by counting the seeds on each die and then finding the matching number.
There are also several math and literacy centers that you can use for the traditional tale of Stone Soup. Here are two of my favorites:
First, students can use vocabulary words from the story to create their own sentences. Students can use sight word cards and the picture vocabulary cards to build sentences in a pocket chart or on the table. After building the sentence, students can use a recording sheet to write and illustrate the sentence.
This Stone Soup-inspired game uses two dice for addition practice. Students will roll the dice, identify the sum, and then find that number on their recording sheet. Once all of the numbers are filled in, the hungry traveler will be able to get to the soup!
If you’d like to incorporate traditional tales into your math and literacy centers, let me save you some time! I have put together a set of over 240 activities for 12 of your favorite timeless tales.
Each set of centers comes with both kindergarten and first grade centers. That way, you can easily differentiate within your classroom anytime throughout the year. Plus, every activity comes with a recording sheet and illustrated “I Can” card. This helps to increase student independence and accountability during centers time.
Many of the activity types that I shared in this post are used across different story themes, making the format of the centers familiar for your students. This helps them complete these activities more independently during your daily rotations!
Just click below to take a closer look at everything included in this bundle of traditional tales centers!
Or, you can click below for the individual timeless tales:
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
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