Teaching Idea--Right?

This is a quick, fun and easy interactive group activity. All you need is a variety of small prizes or wrapped candy for each participant. Everyone sits in a circle and is given a prize or piece of candy. As you tell the story, the group passes the prize they are holding in the direction that is emphasized. When a color is read in the story then all those wearing that color swap seats. When the story is finished, everyone keeps the prize they have in their hands.

When we played this activity at our last retreat, Deb and I included good prizes as well as some not so desired prizes. I remember Heather and Cali both hoping they didn’t get stuck with yet another X-X-L 2005 Scrappin’ Retreats t-shirt. And they both did. They donated them back to the pot and they’ll be there for the next round!

*To make the activity a learning experience, simply substitute a story with a moral (or a true story) that you wish to teach.

The Real Princess, Edmund Dulac

Once a very long time ago there lived a prince with two left feet. He was the only one left in the kingdom. All his brothers had left for another kingdom. That’s right, they left without a word. This prince wanted a princess—not any old princess left from any kingdom. He wanted the right princess in a yellow dress with brown eyes.

The blue prince travelled right around the world looking right and left for a princess with a pretty pink smile. He was right, there were plenty of women, green with envy at hoping to be rightfully chosen as his wife, but whether they were real princesses he had a hard time rightfully deciding. There was only one thing left to do—go right home and think about it.

That very evening, after he’d left the supper table, he went right to bed. He didn’t even sit to write a note to remind himself to look for a princess the next day; he just left everything and went right to sleep.

That night there was a terrible storm; there was thunder and lightning, right and left. The rain poured down. In the middle of the storm somebody knocked at the town gate and the old King himself sent someone to open it right away.

It was a princess who was left standing—purple from the cold. The water streamed right out of her hair and right down her clothes. It ran right in at the top of her shoes and right out at the heels, but she said that she was a real princess. The servant invited her to the castle.

“Well, we shall soon see if she is a real princess,” thought the old Queen. She went right into the guest bedroom and took all the bed clothes that were left on the bed and put them on the floor. Then, she laid a pea on the bedstead. She took twenty mattresses and piled them right on top of the pea, and then left twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. This was where the princess slept that night. In the morning they asked her how she slept.

“Oh terribly bad!” said the princess. “I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night! Heaven knows what was left in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing and my whole body is black and yellow this morning. It was right terrible!”

They saw at once that she must be a real princess when she had felt the pea they left through twenty mattresses and twenty white feather beds. Nobody but a real princess could have such a delicate skin—so peach and fair.

So the prince took her to be his rightful wife, for now he was sure that he had found a real princess and the pea was put right into the Museum and left for others to see, where it may still be seen if no one has stolen it right out from underneath the curator’s nose.

This is a true story. Right?

What story have you used with this activity?