The fairy tale corner information

Theory

Within your classroom, you can create different corners in which children can play. A fairy tale corner is the perfect way to combine fairy tales and playful learning together and thus combine the advantages of both into one activity.

When you want to create a good corner for in your classroom, it is important to keep in mind that the corner needs to stimulate the children to explore, to being active, to discover new things, to describe and compare and to expression in all different forms (van der Linden, van den Boogaard & van Lith, 2017). If you can observe those aspects in your corner, then you know you did something right.

Even though you know all about those aspects, it can still be a little difficult to guide the children while playing in those corners. The 'achtbaanmodel' (see figure 2) can help you with this. It is a model, created by a Dutch author to guide you through guiding children within the corner in 8 steps.

Figure 2. Achtbaanmodel. (Antonissen, 2019, p. 20). 

First you create and decorate the corner. You put in everything the children might need to work on the aspects I wrote down up above. The second step is to let the children play. Thirdly, you as a teacher takes some distance and observes what's going on within the corner. What are they doing in there, how is the playing going? Then the next step is to use the information you observed to guide the children within their play. You can help the children with some small questions or actions. Then fifthly, the children play along and sixthly, you observe more and more. Then at last, you decide what your next action will be. Do you need to change anything in the corner? Are there any problems that need to be solved? Can they play on themselves now? 

The fairy tale corner

Figure 3. Fairy tale corner of little red riding hood. (Juf Geeske, 2010).

Within the fairy tale corner you can decide to choose one fairy tale as a topic for your corner, or to use fairy tales in general. If you use one fairy tale, like how little red riding hood is used as a topic in the corner on figure 3, you can create some suitable items yourself or borrow or collect them.

If you decide to make the corner about fairy tales in general, you can place some picture books in the corner to give the children some inspiration. It is also important to place suitable object within the corner that give the children the chance to explore and be active.