"The Princess and the Pea"

 Target group: 5 to 8-year-olds.

 Method: Variouis Forms of Drama

 The youngest pupils have the imagination and creativity that enable them to identify themselves with the fairy-tale world. Children in this age group usually love to act -especially in small, familiar groups.

When the pupils use their imagination to give life to the fairytale characters, and their creativity to make puppets, scenes, etc, they acquire a deeper and much more fundamental understanding of the fairy tale than if it was merely read aloud.

When we add to this that both imagination and creativity are enhanced twofold, so to speak, by letting the children write their own fairy tale after working with "The Princess and the Pea " and letting them work on it following the same pattern, it is difficult to imagine a more exciting or instructive introduction to the fairy-tale world. The pupils own fairy tale is translated into English and distributed to other schools where their pupils can work with it in a similar fashion. An English translation of the manuscript could be accompanied by video or tape recordings.

   Hans Christian Andersen  - and the children of Europe