Aesop’s Fables, a fun a quick lesson

This Aesop’s Fables lesson is a quick and easy way to get your kids interacting with the material, and is a fun way to bring in homeschool history lesson (which is how we originally used it).  The technique would be great for most subjects you learn, but today we used it for Aesop’s Fables.

Oh, cool idea to extend Aesop’s Fables for older kids

And, an extension I just thought of as I’m typing, you could totally tie this in to Jesus’ parables with the older kids.  There is a reason so many stories are told in this way because it’s an easy way to get a lesson and rather disarming.  It could make for a great discussion, or essay to write.  Idea filed away for when my kids are in junior high, and we cover this again.

But, getting back to our lesson on Aesop’s Fables, rather than my rabbit trail

Knowing I wanted to do some fun stuff with Aesop’s Fables, but I didn’t want to draw it all out which is my bad default habit, so I searched on Google and found the DLTK Kids site for Aesop’s Fables.

Perfect!

I printed off three that fit favorite animals or ones I thought they would most enjoy: The Bat, The Birds, and The Beasts; The Lion and the Mouse; and The Tortoise and the Hare.

For the kids I printed off the black and white moral of the story.  For me I printed off the stories and copied them into a word document to make a super simple pop-up story for their history books.

In case you can’t tell how it’s made you cut around most of the picture, but leave a little bit on both sides still attached.  Then you fold that in the opposite way the card will open.

Underneath to give it a bit more stability I put a second piece of scrap paper to help it hold up better.  The kids had so much fun with these stories.

After I read each story to the kids I had them give me a quick summary of what had happened and the moral of the story, for an unofficial bit of narration.

Want to kick up your Aesop’s Fables lesson a notch?

A few years later when the kids were in 3rd grade we covered Aesop’s Fables again, this time they had a more involved project:Aesop’s Fables and project based learning.

For more Ancient History ideas check out my Mystery of History 1 pinterest board, or Mystery of History 1 landing page.