Anne-Marie is a National Board Certified School Librarian at Livonia Primary School in Livonia, NY.  She loves to help kids to find the perfect story, discover the best information, and create multimedia about world they live in.

What would Cinderella see outside her window?

That depends.  Does she live in a small village in France, near the walled city of Great Zimbabwe, or in  the mountains of the Czech Republic?  Is it her fairy godmother or Godfather Snake she asks for help?  Cinderella might see the pumpkin patch from which her transformed carriage will come, or she might see a volcano with smoke rising from the top.  The wicked stepmother might keep Cinderella from visiting that castle down the hill, but then again, she might send her stepdaughter out to find violets in the snow.

Young children rarely have any perception that their own culture is not universal.  They assume that everyone dresses the same, eats the same foods, and celebrates the same holidays. Our first graders are working on a project-Cinderella’s Window-that will introduce the kids to the fascinating differences between countries, while understanding that some things-like storytelling-unite people the world over. There are lots of methods-history, world languages, maps, cooking-teachers can use to introduce children to the rich variety of ways people live, but folktales make a nice lens through which kids can begin to examine culture since so many traditional tales have been published in picture book form.

Keep reading Anne-Marie’s full post on her blog!
http://otteroffate.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/cinderellas-window/