Lego's Hans Christian Andersen Set: Activities During Corona

I am thinking about some kind of Lego Fairy Tale challenge for Activities During Corona. I haven't finished thinking it through--although I plan to keep it simple--and have to emphasize it is in no way connected with the Lego company, of course. For inspiration, I went web surfing for some fairy tale related Lego builds.

I somehow missed the release of LEGO 40291 Creative Storybook Set (307 Pieces) (Hans Christian Anderson) a while back! Even when I am not actively posting on the SurLaLune blog, I am always noticing and keeping my own lists of fairy tale related items. This set is a natural for Lego since they share their homeland of Denmark with Hans Christian Andersen. Just looking at it reminded me of my own trip to Copenhagen in 2017 when I got to see many HCA related places and pieces. I loved Copenhagen and hope to return someday for another visit.

This set was a free gift with purchase item and I missed this although I even get the Lego catalogs and have for years. I have many, many Lego fans in my family.

This set, reminiscent of the Once Upon a Brick set with it's open book design, depicts Andersen sitting on a park bench, writing one of his tales. The opposite page portrays a scene from The Ugly Duckling. It's still fairly easy to find through online retailers, but not Lego themselves. My links are to Amazon but you can hunt around for it online if you are interested in it.

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Storybook Playsets: Activities During Corona--With Thoughts on SurLaLune Changes on Horizon

I've had the Hansel and Gretel Toy House and Storybook Playset and the others below in my list for posting for a while. I really love the design on all of these, but the Hansel and Gretel is my favorite. All of the candy and the oven right there front and center in the house design makes me cringe and smile. The other two sets are much more innocuous but also pretty, too. I like the Three Bears' house, too.

And don't worry, like yesterday's Princess and the Pea craft, as I share ideas for fairy tale related activities they are not all going to require a purchase. I know economic hardships are going to be one of the biggest challenges for many during this time. And the activities won't all be for kids--or those of us with kid-like hearts for playing with playsets, making crafts, etc.

In fact, I have some ideas of how to allow for volunteer work with getting the new SurLaLune Fairy Tales Database  more populated. I just need to ponder some logistics on that and will share some ideas next week. These are interesting times we live in and I am finding actually one of the things I miss most is the opportunity to do service. I am putting that energy into SurLaLune again after a long year of grief and other distractions. I am determined for this pandemic to bring about some blessings, too. The opportunity to spend some time finishing my current books that have been nearly done for almost two years now and finally getting the new SurLaLune website ready for launch. Good times ahead for those who use the SurLaLune site.

STORYTIME TOYS The Three Little Pigs and Bad Wolf, Book and Toy Set

STORYTIME TOYS Goldilocks and The Three Bears Book and Toy Set

SurLaLune's Small Print:

As an Amazon Associate, the SurLaLune Fairy Tale site earns a percentage from qualifying purchases as a referral incentive which helps support the site. Your cost does not increase by using the links on this site. Read SurLaLune's Privacy Policy here.

Once Upon a Brick: Exclusive Lego Ideas Pop-Up Book Set

Once Upon a Brick: Exclusive Lego Ideas Pop-Up Book Set is available through the Lego store only or through large mark-up by resellers. A fun concept of a Lego set and a definite gift for Lego Fairy Tale fans. I don't think its coincidence that the two fairy tales represented here--Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk--are popular but don't have major licensing versions from Disney.

Description from Lego:

Build, play and display the classic fairy tales Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk with LEGO® Ideas 21315 Pop-up Book! This first-ever buildable pop-up book made from LEGO bricks opens to reveal the famous scene of grandmother’s forest cottage featuring opening door, bed and kitchen area. Recreate the scene when Little Red Riding Hood meets the wolf or swap out grandmother's cottage for the scene of the giant's castle in the clouds. This collectible toy features enough bricks to build both scenes or you can even build a scene of your own and makes a perfect creative gift. This LEGO set includes a booklet with a short history of pop-up books, a condensed history of each fairy tale in the set, as well as information about its fan designers and LEGO designers.

• Includes 4 new-for-November-2018 LEGO® minifigures: Little Red Riding Hood, Grandmother, the Wolf, and the Giant. Also includes 1 new-for-November-2018 microfigure: Jack.
• First pop-up book in LEGO® history features 2 different LEGO fairy tale stories: Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk.
• Build and display or recreate your own stories from 2 classic fairy tales with this imagination toy.
• This LEGO® Ideas set features enough bricks to build both fairy tales in the set or you can even build your own scene.
• Includes a booklet featuring building instructions, a brief history of pop-up books, a short history of the 2 fairy tales in the set, plus information about this amazing classic fairy tale’s fan designers and LEGO® designers.
• Pop-up book measures over 7” (20cm) long and 5” (13cm) wide when closed, and over 11” (28cm) wide when open.

“Baba Yaga Clucking Cottage” in Legos by Gabe Huff

The Nashville Public Library recently held its annual Lego Building Contest. I happened to look through the many impressive builds and saw this lovely surprise which also won for its age category: Grades 8 – 12: Gabe Huff, “Baba Yaga Clucking Cottage”

I was not expecting to see a Baba Yaga cottage and such a great one at that! Again, the Russian fairy tale influence is strong right now. Love it! Some impressive engineering to get that house to sit on those chicken legs, too.

There are some other great builds in the gallery of entries. Be sure not to miss them. I don't envy the judges!

Melissa & Doug Fairy Tale Friends Hand Puppets

Melissa & Doug Fairy Tale Friends Hand Puppets

Melissa and Doug Toys currently have two fairy tale themed puppet sets. One is the rather generic Melissa & Doug Palace Pals Hand Puppets and the other, not surprisingly is Melissa & Doug Fairy Tale Friends Hand Puppets which is really Little Red Riding Hood as you can see above. Pretty much if there is a company makes a set of fairy tale themed puppets, their first set will be Little Red Riding Hood, sometimes their only set. It beats Cinderella, Three Little Pigs, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The concept is usually centered around having four characters--that seems to be the ideal in fairy tale themed puppet sets for some reason (although other sets will shoot for five for all fingers on a hand, like Five Little Monkeys, etc.). LRRH lends itself nicely to the four and is just that popular, I guess.

The Palace Pals set lends itself more to St. George and the Dragon which must make it more popular in Europe where that tale is much more commonly represented. I don't know many kids in the U.S. who are familiar with it.

The one puppet set I am missing in any iteration? Rumpelsiltskin. I wish I had one, but I don't. Because I've never seen one. I even have a full Snow White set thanks to a trip to Europe in 2008 where I found one randomly walking through Bordeaux (see Finger Puppet Fun: Lilliputiens) but no Rumpelstiltskin.

Melissa & Doug Palace Pals Hand Puppets

FAO Schwarz Fairy Tale Hand Puppets

FAO Schwarz Hand Puppets - Little Red Riding Hood

I haven't seen these before--and if you have been reading my posts for any length of time you know that I am a puppet enthusiast. I love the Little Red Riding Hood set but the other ones are charming, too. But since they are FAO Schwartz branded, they are not inexpensive. So I will enjoy the images.

I have actually found many new puppets for this year and will be sharing more this week. There will be others that are more affordable. I have nephews and nieces who are young enough to still enjoy storytime with me and the puppets are a key part of that. Sometimes I use them to share the story and other times I let the kids use them to enhance the story, acting it out as we read along. It makes for creative play that we all enjoy.

FAO Schwarz Hand Puppets - Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

FAO Schwarz Hand Puppets - Fairy Tale

Fairy Tale Gift Shop Discoveries at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

As I mentioned last week, I was blessed to go on vacation in October--mine and John's first vacation in four years, almost to the day. We were LONG overdue. Our vacation was long and eventful and occasionally I saw fairy tale things.

One of the best sightings was on our first day of the trip when we were in Barcelona at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. The gift shop had lots of fun things in it. I was so tired and jetlagged at that point that I also didn't care about taking pictures and the gift shop staff didn't say me nay either. So here are my photos for my own reference and where I found them later online for more information and better pictures.

It was an amazing museum, too, by the way. I really was exhausted and John ended up sleeping on a couch for a bit because his body just shuts down on him. He wasn't bored, just couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.

These Build Your Own Bobble Head - Fairy Tales were something new to me and looked like fun. If I was still working in a library, I would have snatched these up and assembled them for a display in the children's room. I had a few fun displays back in my day.

This Prince Philippe with the frog prince is by Djeco Toys--apparently made by France's Papo which I see has many fairy tale themed items--some I've investigated before. I will research and share more in a separate post soon! The Djeco site has that animated stuff you are forced to load and watch before you can really see much which is followed up by mystery meat navigation which I don't have time to mess with today. Or any day for that matter. Sells and informs absolutely nothing to anyone. 

These Shrinkables - Fairy Tale were perhaps the most tempting but on the first day of a trip, I was very reluctant to add ANYTHING to my luggage. Fortunately, I found these online and now have them in my wishlist for a possible splurge someday in the future. These reminded me of the Shrinky Dinks I loved when I was in 4th grade, many moons ago.

Again, I am a school supplies and stationary junkie, so I wanted these Fairy Tale Color Pencils and the erasers pictured above them, too. But I practiced self control yet again!

Finally, there were a few pieces from the UK's Tyrrell Katz brand. With further research, I've learned these are part of the Princess line and include many items, such as the backpack at the top of this post and more. The museum didn't have the Tyrrell Katz Princess Beaker, which is a good thing because I bet I would have bought that to hold pencils on my desk. Which may have convinced me to buy the Fairy Tale Color Pencils and then the self mastery would have been sliding down that slippery slope of indulgence. I ended up with room in my luggage by the end of the trip, but I didn't know that at the beginning! And since international delivery is very cost prohibitive for a beaker, I think this will remain as an image in my files instead of a pencil holder on my desk!