YP Letters: Why fairy stories have powerful life lessons for children

From: Mrs Sarah Weller, Hipperholme Grammar Junior School, Wakefield Road, Lightcliffe, Halifax.
Storytelling is priceless to a child's education, says headteacher Sarah Weller.Storytelling is priceless to a child's education, says headteacher Sarah Weller.
Storytelling is priceless to a child's education, says headteacher Sarah Weller.

THE 17th annual National Storytelling Week is now underway.

Once upon a time, about 40 years ago, I would spend many a happy moment reading my Ladybird fairytale books over and over again. Those stories, along with repetitious recitals of nursery rhymes, set me in good stead for an appreciation of literature – as well as instilling valuable life skills and social messages.

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As a mother, I enjoyed reciting them to my own children, but as a primary school teacher, I have used them as an introduction to topics for all areas of the curriculum: Dick Whittington for medieval history, the science of materials from the Three Little Pigs, and Cinderella as a starting point for work on telling the time.

Admittedly, they have not led me to become ‘Einstein’, but as the man himself wisely said: “If you want children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

In a world of ever-evolving technology, the basic elements of a good book are the most valuable and heart-warming. Children consume other media – TV, movies, photography and gaming devices – to create fantasy worlds and distance themselves from reality.

But stories, and fairy tales in particular, are experts in animating human life, affecting what people are able to understand as real, as possible, and as worth doing or best avoided. They provide an alternative world of morality and naivety.

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This National Storytelling Week, we need to focus on enriching young minds with classic values.

Children should read and be read to. Recalling my own school days, trips and stories are at the forefront. I remember watching the launch of a new canal boat, and listening avidly to the tales of My Naughty Little Sister in story time.

My parents didn’t study the theories of learning, but simply valued family time. What they achieved was two daughters who remember their childhood with fondness, and who have achieved success in their own endeavours; their ‘happily ever after’.

Make a difference in your child’s life and involve the whole family in National Storytelling Week.

The relationships constructed around shared stories, and the sense of purpose that stories invoke, I guarantee will be rewarding.

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