The Flying
Trunk - A Fairytale in Chalk
Hans Christian Andersen penned the fairy tale
“The Flying Trunk” The tale was first published in 1839. I chose it for a
project at the after school I work in because of its relation to flying. For the month of April the theme at after
school is, “I will fly – Volare”. The
flying related fairytale was perfect to share as the storyteller at after
school. The arts and after school programming go hand in hand. With the
thermometer outside climbing to an early spring 50 degrees we headed to the
sidewalk for our story.
The young man in our story inherits a
sizeable fortune only to squander it down to the last few coins. Now poor, his
soul possessions are his slippers, and an old dressing gown. He needs to leave
where he lives and does not know where to go. A friend gifts the young man a
trunk. (I used the word suitcase to help the children define this kind of
trunk) The young man has nothing to put in the trunk so he gets in himself. The
trunk is enchanted; its magic lifts him off in a flight across the countryside
to the land of the Turks.
He flies through this foreign country
like a bird under the sun and over the mountains rivers, villages and people working in
the fields.
He comes to the palace of the Sultan and sees a beautiful Princess
at a tower window.
He flies up to her and in through the open window. The
princess has been kept in the tower to avoid a prophecy that she would marry
poorly. He visits several times, each time sharing stories to entertain her. As
expected in a fairy tale, they fall in love.
The princess tells her parents of her suitor and they come to the tower
to meet him. He tells them a story, they enjoy it. He is a good looking young
man with a magical flying trunk, they agree the couple should be married!
In
celebration of the wedding the young man buys a big box of fireworks. He flies
over the city with the fireworks setting them off in the night sky.
He lands his
trunk in the city to tell everyone his story and why he is lighting the
fireworks. Sadly he does not watch over his trunk and the sparks of the
fireworks cause it to catch fire. The fire incinerates his trunk, nothing is left.
He can no
longer fly to the tower to see his beautiful bride. She sits at the windows and
her tears fall to the ground.
Once again
he has nothing but his slippers and an old dressing gown. He wanders the
streets of the land of the Turks telling stories.
I told the
story to the children once straight through, then told it in pieces noting a
section of sidewalk for each image they could draw. This was a chance to reinforce story sequencing with the children.They worked on their
picture and visited up and down to see what others were doing. There was a lot
of discussion of what things should look like. This allowed us to talk about
what each person sees in their mind when they hear a story and differences in
how they draw it with chalk. At the end we walked the length of the story and
everyone told a part to go with their chalk drawing.
Our vocabulary words from this story:
Trunk foreign Volare
Enchanted inherit possession
Turks palace Sultan
Prophecy suitor entertain
wander incinerates dressing gown
fortune squander
A Previous adventure with chalk and
fairy tales: http://bit.ly/1ei3XF5
I just found your blog after reading an article about you in the Lancaster Farming newspaper. Very interesting and well done!
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