Teaching with Cinderella

Like many other girls in the United States, Oldest Daughter was just nuts about the Disney Princesses when she was 5.

We restricted TV to two hours a day, but as often as not, those two hours were spent watching Ariel battle the sea witch, or Belle bringing salvation to the enchanted castle of the Beast. Around and about the living room, the kitchen and her bedroom were dolls of Mulan, Tinkerbell, Snow White and Cinderella. And one of her favorite games was to dress up as Cinderella and pretend she was being forced to do housework. (It was hard not to take advantage.)

It's great to see your child excited by something, but when that something is as superficial as the Disney Princesses often are, it can be frustrating as well. As a father, I want my children to focus more on character than on appearances, and too often the marketing driving the Disney Princesses has been concerned with looks. What's a dad to do?

We had fallen into homeschooling because of the policies of local school district. Oldest Daughter had been born two weeks too late to begin kindergarten with her preschool classmates, but she already had begun to unlock the wonders of reading on her own, and we weren't about to miss the opportunity to educate her.

So, wanting to make Oldest Daughter's enthusiasm for Cinderella my ally, I asked her if she would like to hear another version of the story, from Germany. When she agreed, I pulled my beloved copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales down from the bookshelf, and introduced her to Ashenputel, the Cinderella whose stepsisters actually cut off parts of their feet to get into the shoe.

That simple action was the first step on a journey that took us around the world. In the months that followed, we made one trip after another to the local library to discover stories of Cinderella from other countries, other times, and other cultures. When those had finished, we snatched up other fairy tales, wherever we could find them, and made connections to other tales we had read, wherever we could.

With Cinderella alone, Oldest Daughter was exposed to fairy tales from Mexico, Ireland, Cambodia, the Philippines, Germany, Swaziland, England, France, West Virginia, Haiti and Los Angeles. She has seen the fairy godmother as a maid, a grandmother, a magical fish and a bull. Once we even read a story where Cinderella was a boy.

And, more than literature, this was a lesson in geography. Every time we read a fairy tale, Oldest Daughter and I would find the country of origin on our world map, and place a sticker of that country's flag on the map.

It's been seven years since then. My daughter doesn't play the Princess game any more, except where her little sister is concerned. But she still remembers the other Cinderellas whose stories we read, and she's been known to make connections between stories that I never saw.

Not a bad start for homeschooling.