An Introduction to The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson
Art Gallery
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Sculptures: Ask the children to stand in a circle facing outwards. When you say the words Turn and Freeze – the children should turn into the centre of the circle and freeze as if they were a sculpture entitled Happiness. Explain that this will be the first sculpture in an art exhibition about human feelings.
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Give children time to think about how they will portray happiness with their bodies before they make the sculpture.
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Then repeat with about 6 more feelings/ including those mentioned in the book e.g. kindness/cruelty/mockery/anger calm/ friendship and unfriendliness.
Group Sculpture of kindness and cruelty:
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Organise the class into groups of 4. Ask 2 to be sculpture A and 2 to be B.
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Ask all the As to stand in a circle facing inwards. Then ask the Bs to stand facing their A partners, to make an inner circle.
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Ask the As to make their Bs into a sculpture indicating kindness, by asking them to place their bodies in certain positions. No touching is allowed but As can model how they want Bs to look. They should stand back when they have completed the sculpture and/or give a time limit.
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Each individual sculpture is taken to be part of the whole group sculpture entitled Kindness. Ask all the As to walk around the sculpture group to see other portrayals of Kindness and then discuss the interpretations.
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Now repeat with Bs making As into a sculpture entitled Cruelty and talk about the differences.
The Quest and freeze-frames
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Explain the following basic structure of the tale of a quest:
1) the main character(s) sets off on a journey
2) things go wrong
3) the problems are overcome
4) the character reaches their destination in the end
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Ask the children to imagine they are characters in a quest, searching for their friend; a boy called Kay. He was a kind boy whose heart was so hardened by a wicked snow queen, that he became cruel and followed her into her icy castle.
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In groups, ask the children to plan and make a freeze-frame of something kind that Kay had done before his mind was made cruel by the queen.
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When most have planned their freeze-frame, they should show them to the rest of the class and then explain what was happening in the freeze.
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Then ask them to plan, make and share another freeze-frame, to show the moment they realised that Kay had changed and become cruel.
Explain that the children must now read The Snow Queen, to discover what happened when one of Kay’s friends called Gerda searches for Kay.
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