Goldilocks and the Three Bears Retell Literacy Center Activity

Create your own Goldilocks and The Three Bears retelling activity with this free download for kindergarten.

This is how I created a Goldilocks 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 Goldilocks and the Three Bears right in February.

I like using this when my students are familiar with other classic tales and we can discuss the numbers often found in folk tales and fairy tales.

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. Often, they like to retell this story since it has a lot of prop pieces.

What's in my Goldilocks and the Three Bears 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 inherited the marker-colored props.

My mom made the large masks on giant popsicle sticks and the finger puppets are from long ago.

But, I've found similar pieces so you can print and make this too.

How to make your own Goldilocks 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 links to Amazon)

Materials

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears {Free download}
• Bears (Stuffed animals, plastic or finger puppets)
• Goldilocks Golden Wig (optional)
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears Book by James Marshall

Here are some additional printable resources you may find helpful to bring it all together!

• Bear Cottage Printable
• Inside the Cottage Backgrounds
• Three Bears Masks
• Animal Masks

What to do

Print off your book characters and/or props if you're going to be using printables. Add popsicle sticks onto the backs with strong packing tape to make them feel like puppets.

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, they can usually do a good job, especially if you read this story multiple times before you release it to your students.

More Goldilocks

After reading this book multiple times, we really did fall in love with the structure of the story. In fact, we went on to read lots of different versions of Goldilocks. Here are some that we loved:

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Bears Should Share!
• Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Caralyn Buehner
• Goldilocks and the Three Bear by Samantha Berger
• Dusty Locks and the Three Bears
• Somebody and the Three Blairs

I also really like introducing the concept of "flipped" versions.

We read lots of different versions of our main story, but we begin to dig into the concept of perspective (and continued this with The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Little Red Hen, and the Three Little Pigs).

It was neat to see them take a story like Goldilocks, or a flipped version and try to write their own during writer's workshop. So much awesomeness can come from reading classic literature and digging in deep.

Want another fun example? Try this kids Goldilocks and the 3 Bears retelling video.

Conclusion

There you have it – how to make a Goldilocks retell activity for your class. I love that it brings a classic story to life.

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

• Cinderella
• The Little Red Hen
• Red Riding Hood
• Hansel and Gretel