Fairy Tales in Different Cultures -- Cinderella from a Different Point of View

This week I am going to share Hazel's favorite version of Cinderella. This is not a multicultural post, but a reminder to always look at who is telling the story and the point of view whether looking at fiction or non-fiction. Today I share Seriously, Cinderella is SO Annoying!...The Cinderella Story as Told by the Wicked Stepmother by Trisha Speed Shaskan.

Since this version is not from a different culture or country, I will not share my normal information about a country or culture. 

This book is narrated by the stepmother. She describes the first time she stepped into Cinderella's house having just married her father. Her father left right away on a business trip just as his new wife and her daughters are arriving. Cinderella explains he does that often. The stepmother looks around the house is disgusted to see how dirty it is. She asks Cinderella about cleaning and all four begin to clean. The stepmother gives each of them a job, but Cinderella keeps finishing her assignments very quickly and keeps talking and talking--telling stories about the mice and birds that help her clean and such tall tales. Even at dinner Cinderella just keeps talking to the point where they have to ask her to be be quiet (or shut up). 

One day Cinderella or Cindy as the stepmother calls her develops a case of laryngitis. This happens to be the day the invitation to the ball that night arrives. The stepmother tells her Cindy she cannot go since she is sick. Of course Cindy goes after the stepfamily leaves for the ball and marries the prince. The stepmother is happy to be rid of the non-stop talking and wishes the prince luck with his wife for when she gets her voice back. Of course she also starts telling tales about a fairy godmother turning a pumpkin into a carriage and such.

As you can see this is a very different take on the whole Cinderella story. I love it because it enables us to talk about point of view and how important it is to know whose view of a story you are hearing (especially history). Another place to look at this information is statistics. As a former math teacher who has taught statistics, I always tell students to look at information about studies to see if they are truly valid. The number in a study is one of the most important things to look at and then which statistics they are giving you. The mean or average and the median or the middle number are two common statistics. They each have their own appropriate places. 

Mean manipulation example:

 If your data is 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 90, the median is 4.   The mean is approximately 16.29. As you can see the 16.29 is greatly influenced by the outlier point of 90.

The mean however is good when you have a large sample size and do not have outliers. It is also important to comment that the mean is useful if the outliers make a difference to your data. 

So this book is a reminder to look at who is telling the story and if you are looking at statistics to look at the information that is given. How many data points are used?  Which statistic is given? If it is the median is that because of outliers and do the outliers affect the overall study?

Sharing Saturday 13-24

Last week was another week full of great ideas shared. If you have not had a chance to check them out, please do so. The most clicked was on There's Just One Mommy and written by Little Bins for Little Hands and was Themed Play Boxes. The pictures were all locked, so I could not get one for you. Sorry!! However here are some pictures from a few of my favorites.

1) From JDaniel4's Mom: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities
2) From Explore and Express: Godly Play--Creation
3) From Happy Whimsical Hearts: Ladybug Birthday Cake
4) From The Hands-On Homeschooler: Firefly Science
5) From Let's Play Music: The Threee Bears Action & Storytelling Songs

Thank you to everyone who shared last week and two weeks ago!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess: This week we had several fun activities including The Berry Book for the Virtual Book Club for Kids, Penguin Cinderella, Song Inspired Mirror Image Art and Exploring Spain Day 2 with food, music, dance and crafts.

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
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Exploring Spain 2 with Food, Crafts, Music and Dance

Last week I shared our first post about exploring Spain with food, craft and stories. Today we decided to explore it a bit more with some music, gazpacho and flamenco dancing and a flamenco dancer craft. 

We started by making some gazpacho. We combined the three recipes found in the same three cookbooks we used last time. Hazel enjoyed peeling and chopping the cucumber. We also pulled out the garlic press and the food processor, so she enjoyed it. She said the soup itself was all right, but really did not eat much. (The true test to whether she likes something is how much she eats. She always says things are good.) I on the other hand had two bowls of it for lunch.

Gazpacho Recipe:
2 medium cucumbers, peeled and chopped
5 medium tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 medium green pepper, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
4 cups cubed bread with crusts removed first
4 cups cold water
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon oregano
juice of a lime

Put all ingredients in food processor and puree. Chill for a few hours and serve cold.


After making the soup, we read a bit more about Spain in the Fiesta Series Spain book. I wanted to read more so we could try the flamenco dance. Hazel loved doing this. We pulled out the fan we made last week as well as the one we bought in Epcot and her to castanets. Then we danced around the house to a CD of Flamenco Music from Spain that we got out of the library.

Hazel really wanted to do a craft today as well, so we made a flamenco dancer clothespin doll. I found the instructions at Making Friends. Hazel really enjoyed wrapping the string for the dress. While making this craft, we continued to listen to the Flamenco CD. Then t we listened to a playlist of songs from Spain from these CD's.

Overall we had fun learning a bit about Spain! Next month we will be "traveling" to Kenya. I hope you will join us! Plus next week I'll have a fun craft I found to keep track of all of these adventures.

Also for your own passport check out this link from Glittering Muffins and for a fun placemat, this link.

You also can check out these amazing posts or add your own Spanish adventure here. 

Song Inspired Art: Ride, Horse Ride by Daria

Last week I shared our first music inspired art/activity post. This week, we are sharing another song inspired art from the same CD, I Have a Dream by Daria. The song this week is among Hazel's favorites. It is called Ride, Horse Ride. First I am going to share with you the song via Daria's video.


Now this song is rather simple and has a fun beat. Daria e-mailed me a wonderful idea of making a Pow-wow Drum to play while listening this song. We have not done this yet, but I hope to.  We however worked on mirror image paintings and chalk drawings for the sun and moon beams and then put horse stickers on them.

We started with chalk drawings. We folded a white piece of paper in half and then used sun colors: red, yellow, orange, white and colored on half the page. Then we folded the page and used a rolling pin over the paper to try to transfer the chalk to the other side. It did not transfer as much as we hoped, but we had fun with it. We repeated this activity with black paper using moon colors: blue, white, green, yellow. Then we put small horse stickers on them.

Next we used some paints. We used washable finger paints and a few colors of acrylics. We used too much paint on each picture. They are going to take days to really dry. However Hazel really enjoyed this. Again we folded the paper in half and put paint (drops) on one side. This transferred much better to the other side. (In fact for those looking for a lesson there is a fractal lesson I once did with this type of painting. The transfer process puts lines into the paint and they form a type of fractals.) Next we went and put horse pictures on them. Hazel decided which one got the big stickers and we had horse head stickers for the other ones. Hazel also made one extra painting with all the colors of finger paints.

While making the drawings and paintings we were listening to Daria's CD and Hazel enjoyed singing into the microphones on her portable CD player. She knows all the words to all the songs so she was having a blast.

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Cinderella Penguin or Antarctica

So a few days late, but this week our Cinderella story is not really a multicultural one, but it is called Penguin Cinderella or The Little Glass Flipper by Janet Perlman. It is really just the traditional Cinderella story written with penguins as its characters. I thought it would be a fun time to share some facts about Antarctica and the penguins we have seen at Sea World Orlando and New England Aquarium. I will also be using Penguins by Gail Gibbons (Virtual Book Club for Kids author of the month) as a source!

Antarctica is the southernmost continent and contains the South Pole. It is the coldest, driest and windiest continent in the world. It also has the highest elevation. It is considered a desert due to the minimal amount of precipitation. The temperature has reached −129 °F. There are no permanent human residents, but many people reside there throughout the year at research stations. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice averaging 1 mile thick.

Source

Antarctica is home to many species of penguins as well as blue whales, orcas, colossal squids and fur seals. We will focus on the penguins due to the book being based on penguins. The Emperor Penguin is the only penguin that mates in the winter in Antarctica. The Adelie Penguin breeds farther south than any other penguin. The Rockhopper Penguin has distinctive feathers around the eyes. (Source)

Rockhopper Penguin at Sea World

There are seventeen different kinds of penguins. The smallest is the Little Blue Penguin (also called the Fairy Penguin) and the largest is the Emperor Penguin. All penguins have black or bluish-gray backs and white bellies. They all have the same basic body shape and characteristics.

Little Blue Penguins at New England Aquarium

The Adelie and Emperor Penguins never leave Antarctica. Others live in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, South America, and the Galapagos and other islands. 

King Penguins at Sea World

All penguins are birds, but they cannot fly. Over time their wings changed into flippers to aid in swimming and hunting for their food. They are excellent swimmers and divers. Larger penguins can swim faster than 25 miles an hour. Groups of penguins may stay in the water for weeks at a time. Their natural enemies are fur and leopard seals, sea lions, sharks and orcas (killer whales). 

Swimming Penguin at Sea World

Once a year many penguins come together and form colonies called rookeries. This is the time they mate and raise their young. At this time the penguins make loud noises, but most of the time they are quiet. The mating process is different for the different species. I think the most the commonly known mating process is the Emperor Penguin's. The Emperor (and King) Penguins only lay one egg. The female quickly passes it over to the male and he carries it at the top of his feet . The egg is kept warm by a flap on his belly called the brood pouch. During the incubation time the female swims out to sea to feed. The male Emperor Penguins gather together to stay warm. They rotate constantly to the inside and outside of the group so all are able to stay warm. During this time the males do not eat and can lose up to 45 percent of their body weight. It takes 65 days for the egg to hatch. The female returns around this time and she tucks the chick under her brood pouch. The male then goes out to sea to feed. The chick is grey and covered with soft down. The mother feeds the chick by regurgitating food for it. When the father returns, both parents take turns feeding and keeping the chick warm. When the chicks are large enough, they gather in groups called creches. They huddle together to stay warm. When the chicks are three to ten months old they begin to lose their gray down and grow their adult feathers. At this stage they are called fledglings. (Source: Penguins by Gail Gibbons)

Penguins at both Sea World and New England Aquarium

Before going into the book, I want to share our experience on the Antarctica ride at Sea World. Now the first day we went to Sea World, this new exhibit had a two hour wait. With a four-year-old and twin five-year-olds with us, we did not wait two hours. Hazel and I went back for a second day in the rain and the wait was only fifteen minutes. We did wait this time and it was worth the fifteen minutes. I am not sure I feel it would be worth a two hour wait. When you get in the first room you see a short film about a penguin hatching from the egg. You then follow this penguin chick through his life as he grows up a bit. The next room is where you decide which ride you want. There is a mild ride and a wilder ride. We went on the mild one. From what I could tell, the wilder one turned more and bumped around a bit more. The ride is suppose to give you the sense of what life is like in Antarctica. There is even a cold spot supposedly, but the only place we felt cold was when we were in the penguin exhibits.

Pictures from the ride including wet Hazel on it

During the ride you see more short films about the life of the penguin including a blizzard hitting. Then when the ride is over you are literally only a couple of feet away from live penguins. There are places to see them underwater and places to seem them above. Sometimes there was a glass wall between you and other times it was a plastic fencing that did not go all the way to the top. It was so neat. This to me was the best part of the whole ride.

Pictures from Sea World

Now onto our story. So in this story Cinderella is a penguin. She is a good penguin. In the book she has gold hair. Her stepmother and stepsisters are also penguins. The stepsisters get to wear beautiful clothes and sleep in luxurious beds. Cinderella is given rags and sleeps in the cold cellar on a shelf next to some tin plates. Cinderella does all the housework including picking up after her stepsisters.

Our Penguin Puppet Show

One day an invitation arrives to the Penguin Prince's Costume Ball. The stepsisters have new costumes made and spend much time looking at themselves in the mirror. Cinderella would like to go, but her stepfamily just laughs at her saying the prince would never want to meet someone like her. The day of the ball Cinderella helps the stepsisters get ready and then without a thank you or goodbye their carriage leaves and Cinderella is left alone. She begins to cry and the little blue fairy penguin comes and asks Cinderella why she is crying. She tells her to go get a pumpkin so she can go to the ball. (Ok, first spot that we know this story does not take place in Antarctica since pumpkins cannot grow there.) The fairy turns it into a beautiful coach. Then she finds six mice carrying a hunk of cheese (we only had three). She turns the mice into horses and the cheese into the coachman. Then she turns Cinderella's clothes into a beautiful gown and glass flippers. (We used our Sea World Animal Rescue Barbie doll flippers.) Cinderella goes to the ball with the warning that she must leave by midnight. She dances all night with the Prince Penguin and all of a sudden it is almost midnight. She runs off and leaves behind one of the glass flippers. The prince will only marry the penguin whose flipper fits in the glass flipper. Everyone tries it on, but the glass flipper is too small. Then Cinderella gets her turn and of course it fits. She marries the prince and they live happily ever after.

We made the penguin puppets and acted out the story with some props. The puppets are just construction paper and googly eyes glued to popsicle sticks. We did not dress them or give them hair, but kept them more natural or how we saw them at Sea World.