Fairytale Flip – Bay Area Discovery Museum

Fairytale Flip

Tell a familiar fairytale but from a new perspective! Putting a creative spin on a well-known story helps children explore their imagination and flexibility, both important facets of creative thinking.

Materials Required

  • Paper
  • Pen or pencil (something to write with)
  • A book of fairytales (optional)

Instructions

  1. Choose a fairytale to retell through the eyes of a character or object other than the main protagonist. Consider these alternate story angles and points of view:
    • A story from the seven dwarves’ perspective.
    • A story on the adventures of Mary’s little lamb.
    • A story from the point of view of the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
    • What would the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk say about Jack, his mother and the Giant if he were the storyteller?
    • Miss Muffet was clearly frightened by the little spider that sat down beside her. How might her scream have made that spider feel?
    • How would Cinderella’s fairy godmother tell her story? Or what if Cinderella’s slipper could talk? What would it say?
    • The Three Billy Goats Gruff outsmart the troll under the bridge, depriving him of a meal. What would the troll say if he could tell his story?
  2. Write down a reimagined fairytale. Include as many details as possible.

Additional Tips

Try this add-on activity:

Act out the newly created flipped fairytale! Make the set, costumes, and props and invite an audience to enjoy the performance.

Links to Creativity

One of the unique things about a fairytale is that so many people already know how the story ends. Twists on popular versions provide new perspectives that challenge our routine understandings and force us to be flexible in what we think we know about the story. These “new” stories also challenge our expectations, or simply put surprise us! Both flexibility and surprise are important criteria for determining if someone or something is creative.

Supporting research includes:

Root-Bernstein, R. S. (1989). Discovering. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Simonton, D. K. (2012). Taking the US Patent Office criteria seriously: A quantitative three-criterion creativity definition and its implications. Creativity Research Journal, 24(2-3), 97-106.

Contributor

This activity was contributed by the Center for Childhood Creativity at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. For more information and resources see CenterforChildhoodCreativity.org.

©2014 Bay Area Discovery Museum.

Fairytale Flip

Tell a familiar fairytale but from a new perspective! Putting a creative spin on a well-known story helps children explore their imagination and flexibility, both important facets of creative thinking.

  • Paper
  • Pen or pencil (something to write with)
  • A book of fairytales (optional)
  1. Choose a fairytale to retell through the eyes of a character or object other than the main protagonist. Consider these alternate story angles and points of view:
    • A story from the seven dwarves’ perspective.
    • A story on the adventures of Mary’s little lamb.
    • A story from the point of view of the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
    • What would the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk say about Jack, his mother and the Giant if he were the storyteller?
    • Miss Muffet was clearly frightened by the little spider that sat down beside her. How might her scream have made that spider feel?
    • How would Cinderella’s fairy godmother tell her story? Or what if Cinderella’s slipper could talk? What would it say?
    • The Three Billy Goats Gruff outsmart the troll under the bridge, depriving him of a meal. What would the troll say if he could tell his story?
  2. Write down a reimagined fairytale. Include as many details as possible.

Try this add-on activity:

Act out the newly created flipped fairytale! Make the set, costumes, and props and invite an audience to enjoy the performance.

Scroll to Top