Given a creative teaching approach and suitable supplemental activities, children’s literature can be used successfully as a content base for the preschool classroom.

Appropriate selections give students exposure to new, illustrated vocabulary in context, provide repetition of key words and phrases that students can master and learn to manipulate, and provide a sense of accomplishment at the completion of study that finishing a worksheet cannot provide.

Recreating parts of a well-read book is a pleasure, and students feel a sense of accomplishment when they have mastered a piece of literature, regardless of whether it is The Cat in the Hat or Ulysses.

For this activity, we recreated part of the story of Hansel and Gretel. In the story, the siblings are led into the middle of a forest, and Hansel uses pebbles to find his way back home.

To demonstrate their understanding of this section of the story, we created our own path of pebbles.

We then practiced acting out this part of the story with our friends!