An Outdoor Game for Kids who Love Fairy Tales (with printable action cards)
Guest Post by Anna of The Measured Mom
How’s your summer? After a long, cold winter, we’re enjoying some beautiful weather – perfect for taking the kids outside. While my four-year-old could spend all day outdoors, his six-year-old sister often moans, “What can I doooo?” I designed this game with her in mind — but all the kids had fun!
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My kids love stories. Fairy tales are a favorite. I first got my older kids to consent to walking (without riding in the stroller) by retelling all their favorites along the way. So I knew that this action game would be a hit.
I created 20 cards featuring fairy tale characters. Each card allows the kids to become a character and perform an action from a familiar tale. Here’s an example:
Here’s why I like this game:
a) It’s literacy-related. My six year old is happy doing anything that allows her to read. The fairy tale connection is a great bonus.
b) It gets us outside. And I have to admit that’s not always the first thing on my agenda!
c) It lets the kids use their imaginations. It was pretty fun to see my kids sneaking around the giant, moaning like Red Riding Hood’s sick grandmother, and eating candy off the witch’s house.
d) It gives a lot of large motor practice: the kids ran, “flew,” crawled, walked on all fours, and more.
Each of the kids took turns choosing a card. My six-year-old read them aloud.
I chose the first card because I wanted to get them moving right away.
They got pretty far before I could get my camera ready!
Here was our next card.
They had fun with this one. :)
This one kept them busy.
When I announced that it was time for another card, they protested. “We have to get warm first!”
We went through a stack of 20 cards… this was one of our last.
“Did you know I could do this?”
I hope you get a chance to enjoy this game with your own kids! You can pull it out for a play date or even save it for a birthday party.
For more fairy tale fun, check out my free fairy tale emergent readers.
 >>>Get your free fairy tales printable here. <<<
The clip art is from this Etsy shop:
Anna taught for eight years and received her MEd with a focus on literacy before she began her career as a stay-at-home-mom. She loves to learn and play with her daughter (6) and three boys (4,3,1). Anna offers printables and many more education resources for parents and teachers at her blog, The Measured Mom.  You can connect with her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
This is such a creative idea! I love the connection between gross motor and literacy. Great job to Measured Mom and thanks for sharing this, Jenae!
This is seriously fantastic. Like Katherine said above, I love the inclusion of both literacy and movement. Plus, there’s opportunities for context transfer and pretend play. This activity will work well for typical-developing children and many kids with special needs who might need practice with including pretend play and more. Thank you for creating this, Anna! And thanks, Jenae, for sharing this post!
Pinned it! Thanks.
Thank you so much for this! I downloaded it and will print it out for my little one. I also visited Little Red’s Clip art etsy site. I’m thinking something like this would be great for our next birthday party. Were the cards made in a Word document and saved to as a pdf?
I love this! I plan to use it with my girls and I linked to it on my blog – http://letsgoplayoutside.wordpress.com/. Pinning now too.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I LOVE being able to do learning activities while providing movement also! Can’t wait to use these during the coming year : )
I love this! Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you….thank you…..thank you!!!
This is a great idea. I bet the kids had a lot of fun. I have shared this on my Magical Things Fairy Day Roundup post.
This idea is awesome! I like the idea connecting learning and gross motor activities. Kids will have lots of fun and learning.
I have tried endlessly to find the fairy tale cards to download. It will not take me directly when i try to download. Please advise as I know the grandchildren would love to play them
Thank you for your help.
This is a fantastic idea! I’m fascinated by the connection between gross motor skills and literacy. Measured Mom did an excellent job, and Jenae, thank you for sharing this!