SPRING - SPRINGTIME - SPRING (VERNAL) EQUINOX Stories, Folktales, Folklore, Fairy Tales, Myths, Legends, Fables, Nursery Rhymes, Bible, Classics, General Information Scroll down or click on your choice below • Books about Spring/Springtime/Vernal Equinox - Children/Adults • Toys, Games, Classroom Activities - Spring/Vernal Equinox • Jewelry relating to Spring/Springtime - All ages • Online links to Stories/Info - Spring/Springtime/Vernal Equinox • SOS-Searching Out Stories - Spring/Springtime/Vernal Equinox ~Advice & References from Storytellers, Teachers & Librarians

 

 

BOOKS ABOUT SPRING - SPRINGTIME - SPRING (VERNAL) EQUINOX
FOR CHILDREN/ADULTS

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In performance, always credit your sources.
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Alphabetized with short descriptions for your convenience and to save you research time.

	Waiting-for-spring stories by Bethany Roberts. (1984 - Ages 4-8) As the family passes the winter in their cozy home, Papa Rabbit tells them stories about other rabbits.

 

TOYS, GAMES, CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES - SPRING - SPRINGTIME - SPRING (VERNAL) EQUINOX

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Alphabetized with short descriptions for your convenience and to save you research time.

	Bead Bazaar Bead Symphony Bead Kit - Springtime Arietta Perfect for the upcoming slumber party or girl's night! This Bead Kit comes in a hand-crafted wood case with clear sliding lid. Includes: wide array of glass beads, ceramic beads, instruction & design booklet, and findings. Kit makes 8+ accessories. Ages 8 and up.

	Dora - Dress-Up Adventure Springtime Dora Dora's ready for adventure when you dress her up from head-to-toe in her silky spring party dress or sunny-colored shorts with a coordinating bunny t-shirt! Peek inside her Easter egg for a super surprise -- it's Boots!

	My Little Pony - DAISYJO - Dressed as a Bunny - Ready for Spring Daisyjo is in a purple/clear Egg that measures apprx. 18.5" around and 9.5" tall. In this set there is a Daisyjo Figure, Bunny ears, 4 Bunny Slippers, cottontail, watering can, flowerpot and brush. Pony's foot contains magnet. Great fun for those My Little Pony fans!

	Play Gym - Springtime Kids A patch of meadow transforms into a happy world of play! Thanks to the arch, toddlers will have even more fun at grabbing, clasping and playing. The two fabric wings convert it into a tunnel. Includes three removable clutching toys: ringing ring, squeaking bird, play ball. Made of cotton/polyester, study, safe fiberglass rods with foam.

	Ravensburger Springtime Cardinal Puzzle 500 Piece 500 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle finished size 19.3 x 14.25 inches

	Springtime HiBounce Balls, set of 6 The sky's the limit with this set of six exuberant bouncers. Delightfully dotted with splashes of springtime color, they make really fun Easter basket finds. For ages 3 and up.

	Springtime Wreath Plastic Table Cover - Classroom Table Cover Easter Themed Made of Plastic Ideal for All Party Occasions, Office, Classroom and Group Parties

	Stacy Claire Boyd Springtime Butterfly - Set of 50 - Classroom This flat, die-cut invitation is in the shape of a pink-winged butterfly with pink, wire antennas. Colors in the design on the card include: pink, light green, white and yellow.

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JEWELRY RELATING TO SPRING - SPRINGTIME - SPRING (VERNAL) EQUINOX - ALL AGES

Jewelry links are in dark blue and underlined. Click on them to learn more about the jewelry and how to buy it.
Alphabetized with short descriptions for your convenience and to save you research time.

Betty Grable's Springtime Rock Replica Ring from the Hollywood Collection Betty Grable, the Hollywood legend with the million-dollar legs, inspires this amazing aquamarine and sapphire replica ring. A brilliant-cut cubic zirconia stone, with a vivid aquamarine blue color, is surrounded by twelve deep blue sapphire colored CZ stones. The colorful design is featured on a cut-out band of yellow gold over sterling silver.

Springtime Fun Pin from the Artazia Collection Each piece is truly like a miniature artwork, the intricate design is hand painted and set within a very light stainless steel frame. Austrian crystals, beads and a variety of other materials are delicately assembled and set in artists resin resulting in a beautifully finished and durable piece. Truly a work of art, the pin is exceptionally well made and is produced in limited editions.

	Springtime Ladybugs on Leaves and Butterfly Multicolor Lucite Silver-Tone Beaded Stretch Bracelet Fits Standard Size Wrists (6.5" to 7.75") Stretches for Easy On and Off Silver-Tone Base Metal

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ONLINE LINKS FOR STORIES/INFO ABOUT SPRING - SPRINGTIME - SPRING (VERNAL) EQUINOX

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Click on them to go to the Internet for more stories and information.
Story titles are in bold type.
Alphabetized for your convenience and to save you research time.


• Baba Dochia by Samantha Anselmi di Cardano from Encyclopedia Mythica - personifies man's impatience in waiting for the return of spring.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/b/baba_dochia.html

• Eleusis by Dr. Alena Trckove-Flames, Ph.D. - the most famous religious festival, the Eleusinian mysteries.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/e/eleusis.html

• Devil's Colors (The): A Comparative Study of French and Nigerian Folktales by Francoise Ugochukwu
http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/21ii/Ugochukwu.pdf

• Four Children's Books About Springtime: Easter, Seasonal Renewal and Annual Cleaning from suite101.com
http://folktales.suite101.com/article.cfm/four_childrens_books_about_springtime

• Hares and the Spring Equinox from druidicdawn.org
http://www.druidicdawn.org/node/1490

• Little Snow Girl - Russian folktale retold by Vladimir Dahl
http://russian-crafts.com/russian-folk-tales/littlesnowgirl.html

• Saving Spring - a Scandinavian legend, retold by Ilil Arbel. How Spring was jailed by Old Man Winter and rescued in an ingenious way.
http://www.pantheon.org/areas/folklore/folktales/articles/saving_spring.html

• Seasons of the Year - Educational Children's Books that teach about Winter, Summer, Fall and Spring from suite101.com
http://picture-books.suite101.com/article.cfm/seasons_of_the_year_educational_childrens_books

• Spring Children's Books – Teach Signs of Spring - Kids Picture Books About Spring Activities & What Happens in Spring - listing of books from suite101.com
http://picture-books.suite101.com/article.cfm/spring_childrens_books_teach_signs_of_spring

• Spring (Vernal) Equinox, articles related to, from suite101.com
http://www.suite101.com/reference/spring_equinox

• Spring (Vernal) Equinox, Moonraking from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/moonraking/spring_equinox.shtml

• Spring music and folktales from Internet Archive. This fabulous site lets you listen to musical selections relating to Spring and read books celebrating the Spring Season!
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Spring%22

• Stories and Poems about Spring from teachernet.com
http://www.teachernet.com/literacylights/storiesandpoems.htm

• Xipe Totec by Micha F. Lindemans - mysterious Aztec god of agriculture, spring and the seasons, the symbol of the death and rebirth of nature.
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/x/xipe_totec.html

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SOS - SEARCHING OUT STORIES ABOUT SPRING - SPRINGTIME - SPRING (VERNAL) EQUINOX
Advice, Discussion and References from Storytellers, Teachers and Librarians

To retell these stories, get permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain.
In performance, always credit your sources.
Book titles are in dark blue and underlined. Click on them to learn more about the books and how to buy them.
Story titles are in bold type.
Attributions and dates of entries are not included prior to 2005.
Entries are posted as they are received by Story Lovers World.

1) Dinosaur stories are always difficult for 3-5 yr olds. But one thing I did was buy an Easter basket and fill it with large plastic eggs. Inside each egg was a different dinosaur. You can either find small cartoon pics to run off on colored paper or find those small dinosaur plastic miniatures. Then you can make up your own story. Ex. One day I went outside to find Easter Eggs. I went all over the yard (look in many places) Finally I came home to open my eggs to make egg salad sandwiches. Was I ever surprised to find...(pop open an egg) (Most kids will already know what kind of dinosaur pops out - let them answer) So, I opened another egg...(etc)

I also have a puppet show that could be adapted into a story about Easter called "The Easter Parade."

Bugs are pretty easy...there are many ant stories to tell. And of course spider stories. There is that "Little Cockroach" story that has audience participation.

a) Waiting-for-spring stories by Bethany Roberts is one of my favorites. You can let your imagination fly with those little stories.

2) Arbuthnot Anthology of Children's Literature (The), or specifically in Time for Fairy Tales Old and New, compiled by May Hill Arbuthnot, is a story from Italian folklore--"March and the Shepherd." It's a duel of wits between March and a shepherd. March questions the shepherd as to where he will take his sheep to graze. The shepherd tells him, but because March seems too interested, goes to the mountain rather than the plains as stated. March brings horrendous weather to the plains. This goes on for days on end until the 30th of March arrives. Then March had only 30. The shepherd figures he's safe and tells the truth of where he will go. Cross at having been tricked, March goes to April and pleads with her to give him one of her days--she had 31 back then--and he promises he will return it the next day. April finally gives in, March visits the awfullest weather ever on the shepherd, finally is satisfied, but doesn't keep his word. Since that time, March has had 31 days and April 30. I precede this with figuring out which months have which days--counting on your knuckles--hills are 31, valleys are 30--January is the first knuckle. (Except February.) Maybe 3-year-olds don't care to learn the months?

3) "Bear is Sooo Hungry" is in one of Margaret Read MacDonald's books. I had springtime as subject of my storytelling today. Stories of winter end up changing into spring as the winter ends. Sometimes just add what the weather looks like outside, robins are chirping, crocusses or tulips are bursting through the ground, the leaves are fresh and green, the brooks and streams are running full from the snow melting and then go on and tell any story and just place it during the springtime. Butterflies are probably good for springtime.Do you all who live up north have butterflies in the winter or do they reappear in the spring?

4) Sleeping Bunny. And now that you've started me off, I can't HELP thinking of rabbit stories, that famous story of the "Three Little Rabbits and the Big Bad Wolf," or "Bunerella," or "Goldilocks and the Three BIG Rabbits."

5) Ooh, you just reminded me of our rendition of "The Three Bunny Rabbits Bluff." We did it as a puppet play. The biggest bunny rabbit is . . . the Easter Bunny! And he carried an Easter Egg. The troll was pleased - a big bunny and an egg. As he came to get the egg, the egg opened up and swallowed the troll - like a Muppet does. The kids loved it.

Response:
The answer to my prayers. I couldn't stop twiddling with the idea of "Bunny Rabbits Gruff," but I just couldn't make it work. Bunny goats gruff, billy bunnies huff....Bluff! Of course! What else!

Response back:
Oh, my. Late night goofs are so wonderful. Of course we did "The Three Bunny Rabbits Gruff." Can't wait to see what the "Bluff" is like!

6) Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children (Caduto and Bruchac). See "Spring Defeats Winter" (Seneca).

7) Earth Tales from Around the World by Michael Caduto. See "Nanabozho Brings the Seasons (Anishinabe) and "The Wrath of March" (Italy).

8) Easy-To-Tell Stories for Young Children by Annette harrison. I love "The Butterfly Brothers" (to which I add sisters). Annette adds a song about playing and fluttering in the sun, which I don't know, but you could make up one. She also has different children be the flowers and the butterflies, choosing children wearing red, yellow, and white clothing to fit the story. I told it once at a school with uniforms, and used laminated pictures of butterflies and flowers in the 3 colors for them to hold. We ended up photocopying those for the children to color later.

8) Little pine tree where the tree wants to have other kinds of leaves and he doesn't belive when they tell him in winter he'll lose leaves. Well he does, and he's sorry he ever wanted another kind of leaf. When spring comes, the angel of the trees put his own shiny green pine needles back on him and after that he doesn't ever want to be any other kind of tree again.

9) Once I was hired to tell stories to second graders. This was my first "gig" through a particular Performing Arts Council for Children, so a representative of that organization was there to observe. I understood I was to tell for 45 -- 60 minutes; however, when I was introduced, the teacher told her students that because Easter was coming up I would be telling them rabbit stories.

There are many stories that could contain rabbits. Stories with mice as main characters became rabbit stories. Stories with animals in them included many more rabbits than before and the rabbits played very important roles. The tale of how rabbit got a short tale (the one where rabbit meets alligator) was a story I had read versions of, but never told before. It not only got told that day, but rabbit even made up a song right on the spot to get the attention of the alligator (I still needed to fill more time). I know I was amazed at the quantity of rabbit stories I could produce under stress. The teacher was very pleased. So was the arts council representative -- who was even more pleased and very impressed when she told me, "I didn't know you were planning to tell rabbit stories," and I replied, "Neither did I until I heard that introduction." So, my suggestion is that in addition to looking for rabbit stories, you may also want to look at your current repertoire to see what could be a rabbit story or a chick story or could happen in spring. Many stories truly are quite adaptable in that way.

10) Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children by Bruchac and Caduto. See "How Fisher Went to Skyland," which is really a pourquoi tale about why we have warm weather as well as cold plus the origin of the Big Dipper. It involves four North American animals - Fisher, Lynx, Otter and Wolverine. (Actually five, if you count the squirrel from the beginning of the story.) I don't know how many of those are in your particular zoo. When I was learning it, I went to the Detroit Zoo when my grandson was in town, and watched the wolverine roam restlessly around his large rocky enclosure. It made me understand his role in the story much better.

11) I used the stubborn turnip idea. I had elephant going down to pick some yams to make sweet potato pie for the big dinner (name the party anything you want). He stepped into some muck. Called for help. Gorilla came and pulled and pulled and pulled, but couldn't pull elephant out. Gorilla called for help, along came orangutang, chimpanzee, howler monkey, spider monkey and they pulled elephant out. Of course, he invited them all to the dinner. Instead of apes you could start with gorilla and just name different sized animals in your zoo. Shows community building also because the different animals aren't fighting, they're helping each other to make a bad situation come out better. You could also change it to have the new animal walk up and ASK do they need help. If you remember at the exchange place one year one of the tellers told the story of the stubborn yam and each one put their left hand or paw on the left hip, the right hand on the right hip, they gave a little kick and they pulled and pulled. That added a lot of audience participation.

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(Created 8/10/03; last update 3/15/11)

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