The Clever One

The Clever One" adapted from "The Girl Who Used Her Wits" in Handmade Tales: Stories to Make and Take by Diane de Las Casa and "The Clever Daughter-in-Law" in Celebrate the World: Twenty Tellable Folktales for Multicultural Festivals by Margaret Read MacDonald

Again, I combined elements from two different versions of a story into my "personal" version which can be found as a Google document here.  There is a variation that can be found in Joining In: an Anthology of Participation Stories & How to Tell Them compiled by Teresa Miller (1988) by Fran Stallings called "Paper Flowers."  I believe the main character in that version is a servant who gains her independence (it's been quite some time since I read this one).  I've always wanted to tell this story every since I saw it done over 20 years ago.  Diane de Las Casa's version is easier to tell.  In fact I added an element from McDonald's version to fill it out a bit more.  I did not attempt to actually make the props while telling the story though it can be done fairly easily.  I had a large group of varying ages so I did not want to interrupt the flow of the story.  I did ask the children to guess what was made from paper to carry wind, fire and water.  These items can also be made part of a follow-up craft though I used something different (see my post for 7/27/11).  My props were made from different colors of copy paper though I would have used brightly colored origami paper if I had some.

Patterns for the props can be found online or in origami books.  This one has the right size square to cut out to make the cup.