Deciding which fairy tales are appropriate for which age group is a problem which faces every kindergarten teacher as well as every parent who wants to offer fairy tales to children. However, some guidelines may be of help.
There is wealth of folk tales and fairy tales in every country and culture. One can search for such stories and narrate to little children. The fairy tales with their universal appeal are good for children all over the world. Among the fairy tales, there are stories of varying degrees of complexity. At the simplest level there is the “Porridge Pot”, the tale is a delight to three-year-olds as their first fairy tale. They enjoy hearing of the little pot, so full of abundance, which overflows for lack of the right word. At this age the children themselves have a sense of life’s eternal abundance which one child expressed to her mother in this way when her mother said she did not have enough time to take the child out to play: “But Mother, I have lots of time. I’ll give you some.”
In almost every fairy tale there is either a problem which must be solved, such as how to get the porridge pot to stop cooking, or a confrontation with evil, which can take many forms, such as the Queen in Snow-White or the various monsters and witches that the characters encounter. The milder the problem, the more appropriate the tale for younger children and conversely, the greater the evil, the more appropriate the tale is for older children.
Another aspect of fairy tales, the main characters, must undergo certain trials or go on a complex journey before succeeding in his or her quest. In the original version of the “Three Little Pigs”, the pig is nearly tricked three times before he is able to overcome the wolf. Three is a number which frequently arises in relationship to the challenges of the fairy tale.
In this story the pig handles the tasks with a good deal of humor, making it a tale well-loved by four-year-old. In the “Seven Ravens”, the daughter must first journey to the sun, the moon and the stars in order to restore her brothers to human form. This is a tale which speaks well to five- and six-year-olds.
With these thoughts in mind, I would like to divide some of the tales commonly told in Waldorf kindergartens into categories of complexity. This is a somewhat dangerous business, for the fairy tales are so alive that they do not rest comfortably in one category or another. But in the end, one makes one’s decisions very much with a particular group of children or an individual child in mind.
Please accept these divisions lightly as mere indications, and take the time to develop your own judgments in this area.
You may find it helpful to read a few stories from each category as a means of understanding the different levels of complexity of the fairy tales.
- The three-year-olds in the nursery or mixed-age kindergarten are very satisfied with little nature stories, or with a simple tale such as “Sweet Porridge”. The older threes are often ready to hear the “sequential” tales such as the tale of the turnip. The turnip has grown so large that Grandfather cannot pull it out by himself, so one after another come Grandmother, grandchild, dog, cat and finally mouse. All together are then able to pull out the turnip. One finds many tales of this sort which have a strong pattern of repetition and order. There are also traditional songs which fall into this category such as “I Had a Cat and the Cat Pleased Me” or “This is the house that Jack built”. Such sequential stories, songs and verses have the added advantage of being relatively easy for a beginning story teller to learn. A collection of tales for this age group includes the following:
- Sweet Porridge (Grimm, 103)
- Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Russian)
- Little Louse and Little Flea (Spindrift)
- The Turnip (Russian)
- The Mitten
- Little Madam (Spindrift)
- The Gingerbread Man
- The Johnny Cake (English)
- The Hungry Cat (Norwegian, Plays for Puppets)
- The Red Pot
- Funny Bunny Rabbit
(Note: Grimm’s fairy tales are numbered from 1 to 200, and their numbers are given here to help you locate the story in a complete edition of the Grimm’s tales.)
- The next category of tales is slightly more complex, but the overall mood is usually cheerful and without too much sorrow or struggle. The fours and young fives are usually quite comfortable with these tales.
- Billy Goats Gruff (Norwegian)
- Three Little Pigs (English;
- Wolf and Seven Kids (Grimm, 5)
- Mashenka and the Bear (Russian, Plays for Puppets)
- The Shoemaker and The Elves (Grimm, 39)
- The Magic Wrap
- The Golden Lantern
- In the next category come many of the tales which we normally associate with the term fairy tale and which we think of in relation to five and six year olds. These tales contain more challenges and are more elaborate.
The main character often sets out in the world with a simple task to perform such as in the “Miller Boy and the Pussy Cat”. Although obstacles are encountered, they do not weigh too heavily on the emotions of the individual.
Such tales include:
- Star Money (Grimm, 153)
- Frog Prince (Grimm, 1)
- Mother Holle (Grimm, 24)
- Little Red Cap (Grimm, 26)
- Bremen Town Musicians (Grimm, 27)
- Golden Goose (Grimm, 64)
- Spindle, Shuttle and Needle (Grimm, 186)
- Hut in the Forest (Grimm, 169;
- Queen Bee (Grimm, 62)
- Snow Maiden (Russian, Plays for Puppets)
- The Seven Ravens (Grimm, 25)
- Snow-White and Rose Red (Grimm, 161)
- Little Briar Rose (Grimm, 50)
- Princess in the Flaming Castle (this Newsletter)
- The Donkey (Grimm, 144)
- Rumpelstiltskin (Grimm, 55)
- Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves (Grimm, 53)
- Hansel and Gretel (Grimm, 15)
- Jack and the Beanstalk
- The final group is of those fairy tales which are well suited for the six year olds who are making the transition to first grade, This is a time when children lose their baby teeth and are ready for formal learning.
Tales in which characters have a personal experience of suffering or sorrow meet this new phase of inner development in the children. Often these tales are not told in the kindergarten at all but are left for first grade.
- Jorinda and Joringel (Grimm, 69)
- Brother and Sister (Grimm, 13)
- Cinderella (Grimm, 21)
- Rapunzel (Grimm, 12)
- The Water of Life ( Grimm’s)
- The Fishermen and his Wife ( Grimm’s)
- King Thrush beard ( Grimm’s)
- Alladin
- King Midas
- The Pied Piper
- The Twelve Dancing Princesses
The three and four year olds will be attentive and focused when they are with a simpler tale. And on the other hand, if one would tell a complex tale to a group of only three and four year olds, one would find that they do not attend to it well and easily lose interest. The older children generally do not get bored with the simpler tales, for they are now old enough to see the humor in the sequential tales or simpler fairy tales, and they will laugh at the humorous parts while the little ones listen with full seriousness.
When choosing a fairy tale, another factor to take into account is whether a fairy tale is generally well known in the society. When a tale is well known, children often seem ready to hear it at a younger age than they otherwise might be.
The final consideration, and probably the most important one, is the story teller’s own relationship to the story. Sometimes a story teller loves a tale so much that the story may be told to children who are generally too young for it. It is as if the story teller’s love of the tale builds a bridge to it.
When this love of fairy tales is coupled with an understanding of them on the part of the story teller, doors are opened to the whole realm of life in which fairy tales are true and live forever.
Rudolf Steiner describes the fairy tales very beautifully when he says, “Much deeper than one might imagine lie the sources whence flow genuine, true folk tales that speak their magic throughout all centuries of human evolution.”