Cinderella Retell Literacy Center Activity

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Create your own Cinderella retelling activity with this free download for kindergarten.

This is how I created a Cinderella What Do You Hear retell activity to go in our retell center as a storytelling option for my kindergarten students.

Let me show you what’s in our set and give you the materials to make it happen in your classroom too.

It’s one of my favorite literacy centers and we usually introduce Cinderella just before Thanksgiving.

This is one of the first classic fairy tales that I introduce to my students. Although most likely they’ve heard the story before, they love the language in this version by James Marshall which makes it easier to retell.

If you’re willing to go there, it makes great discussion to compare the ending to the ending of The Little Red Hen.

When they retell this story in our retell center, they read they act, they use lots of great vocabulary and are developing fantastic reading habits all while continuing to build their love of reading.

My kinders get to choose the book(s) they want to retell while they are at this literacy center. This one is usually a favorite.

What’s in my Cinderella retell set

Here are the props I gathered rather inexpensively (and you can too) to bring the book alive once we knew it by heart.

I purchased the finger puppets from a long time ago for around $7 and they’ve lasted for years. Since I can’t find them online anymore, I’m going to link to a printable free set below.

The pumpkin, mice (cat toys) and the rat (which is a bath sponge) and toy plastic Cinderella toys including the glass slippers were all found at a dollar store. No kidding!

How to make your own Cinderella retell activity

If you plan to make this a year-long literacy center, I highly recommend that you read the Retell Literacy Center Directions for more details and making everything run smooth.

Because you can make this kindergarten activity yourself and once you and your students are hooked on retelling you’ll want to make this a year-long thing.

Here are the materials you’ll need… (may include affiliate book links to Amazon)

Materials

  • Rat (bath sponge… like mine?)
  • Mice (cat toys work great)
  • Assorted little finds: carriage, characters, pumpkin
  • “Glass” Slipper – plastic bridal shower favor
  • Cinderella Printable Character Masks
  • Cinderella Book by Barbara Karlin and James Marshall

Or you could use these printable Cinderella character cut-outs and add popsicle sticks to make your own puppets.

What to do

Take your book copy and your props and place them together. A container like an open basket, a book bin or a large Ziploc bag will work!

We liked to keep a blanket nearby these materials so that they could create a theater-like puppet stage to sit behind.

But all they need to do is have the book and the materials and use the props to tell as much as they can:

  • about the story
  • from the story
  • with the story (following along)

Encourage kinders to use as many words from the text as they can remember. With a patterned story like this one, it’s pretty easy, especially if you read this story multiple times before you release it to your students.

And when you’re done reading the classic version – it’s time to dig into other versions of this story to compare.

There you have it – how to make a Cinderella retell activity for your class. I love that it doesn’t require much to get it done, especially if you use the free printables. {wink}

If you like this activity, check out this list of 20 more famous stories that are great for retelling in kindergarten. Most of them are just as simple to pull together and I’ve found all of the downloadable resources for you.

Other books that are great for retelling in kindergarten

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