TRIZ Textbooks:  CID Course for Children, 1-2G0123
Invitation to the Fairy Tale

Topic 1. Fairy Tales about Systems
Topic 2. Fairy Tales from the Word "Why?"
Topic 3. "Spoiled" Fairy Tales
Fairy Tales School:
Course of Creative Imagination Development (CID), 
1st Grade, 2nd Semester, Methodical Guide-Book
Natalia V. Rubina, 1999 [published in Russian]
English translation by Irina Dolina, March 13, 2001
Technical Editing by Toru Nakagawa, May 1, 2001
Posted in this "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" in English on May 8, 2001 under the permission of the Author.
(C) N.V. Rubina, I. Dolina, and T. Nakagawa 2001

 
CID Course Top   Guide-Book Top  0. Invitation Topic 1 Topic 2  Topic 3 Next Chapter  Workbook of this chapter 



 
 
Invitation to the Fairy Tale
(Introductory Lesson)
Workbook
      The CID classes during the second semester of the first grade are devoted to the method of creating the fairy tales.  The first aim of the first lesson is to place the children into the atmosphere of a fairy tale, to teach them to see fairy tales’ characters around them.  In the folk tales the relationship and the value of the people, who created these tales are reflected as in a mirror.  Maybe  we will manage to transfer our  ideas about life through the fairy tales.
1.  Warming-up
(See Card Index to the CID classes for the first grade, part 2)
2.  Home work

     The characters of the first part of the Workbook, i.e.,  Colabo, Emil, and Magician Deli-Davai, were  good helpers for our mastering the difficult methods.  The fairy tale goes on and  our true friends  stay with us.  Try to make up the riddles about each of the characters.

3. Introduction to the lesson

     Have you ever been in a fairy tale?
     Once upon a time  there was a king…
     In a far away country, where the sun rises  and the flowers open earlier than everywhere else…
     And what is the other way to begin a tale?  How to start a fairy tale about our class?
 

     A fairy tale as any other system consists of the parts.  The simple task to make up a beginning of a new fairy tale allows to define one of the parts and from the beginning to set up a conversation based on “a fairy tale language”.


4. Main Topic

     There is a fairy tale in our class room; everything here is magic.  Our blackboard , for example, can make up riddles.
 

The crayfish drawn on the blackboard , crawls up.
One has to move three matches so that it crawls down


Activity 1.   Prove that everything in our class-room is magic.
 

       In the children’s imagination the ordinary objects may become magic.  Here are some examples of the children’s comparisons.  The desks are the small stubs, on which in a magic forest classes are held; the walls are the giant trees; the curtains on the windows are the magic mist; and the books can retell amazing stories.

Activity 2.   Listen. We often stop paying attention to the sounds, that surround us, especially  if we are busy.  Let’s listen to a silence for a minute.  Explain in a magic way what you have heard.


Activity 3.   I am rubbing my hands. Why do you think I am doing it?
     When I am rubbing my hands, I am calling the rain.
     Find a magic explanation for the ordinary actions.
 

      Doing this activity the children often copy each other.  Pay attention to this.  If the explanations start to repeat themselves, offer another idea, which will give the children’s fantasy a different direction.


6.  Activities on the speech development or producing a creative product 
 

     Make a picture of your class fairy tale.

7.  Sum up

     A fairy tale can be everywhere;
     A fairy tale, as any other system, consists of some stuff;
     A fairy tale can be seen, heard, felt;
     Everything in a fairy tale is interrelated.
 



 
 
Topic 1.  Fairy Tales about Systems
     (Reviewing)
Workbook


1.  Warming- up

     To match incompatible.
     "I am thinking about a magic word…"
2.  Home-work

     Pictures and comments to them.

3.  Introduction to the lesson
 

I see a bonfire
I hear it cracks
I feel that it is not hot.
I don’t like that it is far from me.
I feel funny because it is green
I like that it is spread.
     What was I talking about?   How did you guess?

4.  Main Topic 

     Pay attention to this: some of you have seen, others have heard, someone has felt the bonfire.

     Presenting this riddle, I have chosen the properties that remind us of a flower.

     I used the following diagram.

 
I see
I hear
I feel
I don’t like
I feel funny
I like


6.  Activities on speech development and designing a creative product 
 

              Make a picture of your riddle.

7.  Sum up

     The pictures of the mysterious objects can be put on the same piece of paper.  You’ll get a map of a magic world, where you have placed yourself.
 
 



 
 
Topic 2.  Fairy Tales from the Word "Why?"
Workbook


1.  Warming- up

     To match incompatible
     “I am thinking about a magic word…”

2.  Home work

     Children’s riddles.

3.  Introduction to the lesson

     We learned to explain in a magic way the most common things.  Today we’ll make use of it.
     Do you know why it rains?   Why is a hedgehog prickly?
     A good story teller told us lots of tales, explaining why a camel had a hump, why a whale has such teeth.  Do you want to listen to this story?

     (See Card index to CID lessons for the first grade, part 2.)

     How those fairy tales appear?

     Let’s find out.  This diagram will help us.
 

WAS
  HAS  BECOME

     1.  Choose any system, unusual property or interesting thing (HAS BECOME).
     2.  Imagine that some time ago everything was different (WAS).
     3.  Explain, why it has happened.
 

     The method "Fairy tales from the word “why?”" is rather simple.  The children will surprise you with the unexpected interpretations of the most common things.  Often this method  becomes one the favorite children’s games, that they can play with their friends and relatives.

     In some classes, applying this method, I discovered  a strong psychological inertia.  It was caused by the fact that the children couldn’t get over their familiar “logical” explanations of the phenomenon of the world around.  The following activity will help to stir up the kids’ imagination, to direct their fantasy against psychological inertia.  The diagram (WAS – HAS BECOME) is  a script which we have already learned to use.  Let’s play every step.  Try to feel yourself a character of a fairy tale (imagine how he moves, talks, what he wants).  What sounds surround your character?  What does your character see around him?  And now, answering the questions: how and why your character has changed? - remember , what you have heard, seen, felt.  (A small comment.  This game will be even more interesting if  the children choose an inanimate object as a character.)


6.  Activities on speech developing or designing a creative product 
 
 

      Write your own fairy tale and make pictures for it.
 



 
 
Topic 3.  "Spoiled" Fairy Tales
Workbook


1.  Warming up

     To match incompatible.
     "I am thinking about a magic word ."

2.  Home work

     The Children's fairy tales.

3.  Introduction to the lesson

     "Once upon a time there was a girl  whose name was  Yellow Riding Hood…"
     "Not Yellow, but Red!"
     "Oh, yes, Red.  So, her father called her and…"
     "No, not her father, but her mother!"
     "That's correct.  Her mother called her and said: go to aunt Rosine and bring her…"
     "No, not to her aunt, but to her grandmother…"
     And so on.
 

     The idea of "garbling" of a fairy tale belongs to J.Rodari, the famous Italian story teller and teacher.  This method allows us to see that a fairy tale, as any other system, consists of the parts, these parts are interrelated.  "Garbling" the tale, the children find the main and subordinate parts of the tale, and learn how to make up the plot.

     "The game is more important than one can realize at first sight.  What we need is to choose for it an appropriate moment.  The kids remain conservative for a long time if it refers to the fairy tales.  They want the fairy tales to be told to them with the same words they were told  for the first time.  It is pleasant for them to recognise these words, step by step to follow the plot, to feel excitement as for the first time in the same order: surprise, fear, reward.

     The children need order and peace, the world shouldn't collaps from the stage that was built by their efforts.

     That is why it is possible that  in the beginning the game of "garbling" the fairy tales will irritate, stir them.  A kid is ready to the Wolf's apparance, but the appearance of an unknown character might make him watchful, as it is not clear whether this character is a friend or an enemy.

     But the moment arrives when Red Riding Hood has nothing more to say to the kid: he can part with her.  As in case of an old toy, that was not useful any more.  At this stage stage he agrees that it can be transfered into a parody, partly because a parody means parting, and because a new perspective stirs interest to the tale itself.

     Put on a different track, a familiar tale makes a child live it over again.  The children play not only with Red Riding Hood but with themselves, let themselves be independent, take responsibility for what might happen.  Here an adult has to be ready to a healthy' arsessive behavior of a kid., to any kind of absurd things.

     In some cases this game might have a sanitation impact.  It will help a child to get rid of some obsessive ideas, will teach not to fear the wolf, to see a wood-goblin less villainous and a witch in a funny way, to eatablish a more accurate border between a real world, where such independence is not accaptable, and a world of imagination.  It must happen sooner or later: but of course no sooner than a wolf, a woo-goblin and a witch perform their traditional missiion, but, naturally, not too late.

     The second serious aspect of the game is in the fact that a paticipant has to analyse a fairy tale using his intuition.  An alternative or a parody may be accepted only in some defenite points, which are typical for that particular tale, define its structure, but not in a course of a smooth development of a contest from one content point to another.  Compositional and decompositional operations in this game take place simultaniously.  That is why such interference may be called operative and not abstract - logical.  As a result a fantasy is scarce and seldom leads to a new synthesis with a new logic, this is more like a wandering around fairy tales' topics without a certain aim, just like one who, instead of drawing , writes scibles."

      J. Rodari: "Grammar of Fantasy. Introduction into the Art of making up stories", Progress, Moscow, 1999, pp. 57-59.


4.  Main topic.

     Try to "spoil" popular fairy tales.
 

1.  Choose a fairy tale.
2.  Retell it in a "spoiled" way.
3.  Guess what fairy tale it is.
6.  Activities on speech development or designing a creative product. 
 
 
 

.                Make a picture of a "spoiled" fairy tale.


 


 
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Last updated on May 8, 2001.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@utc.osaka-gu.ac.jp