|"The haughtiest, proudest|
woman that had ever been seen."
Illustrations by Robinson, W.H.
From Perrault's Complete Fairy Tales, (1697/1961) Trans. by "A.E. Johnson and others." Illustrations by W.Heath Robninson PERRAULT'S COMPLETE FAIRY TALES Translated from the French by A. E. Johnson and Others
Montessori Connection: Language/Vocabulary
1. Read this story and choose five words that you do not know, or five words that seem to have more than one meaning. Example: meanest; lackey; butt; patches; latter
2. Using a dictionary, find the meanings. Learn that meanest is the same as worst; that a lackey is someone like a servant; that butt has at least 12 meanings. One of them is a big barrel that people used to store water, or wine, or beer in. Another meaning is the end of something, as in the butt of a fishing pole, which is the end that does not have the hook on it. Still another is the target, as in, "She was the butt of the joke." Learn that patches can mean a small piece of cloth or paper, or a bit of plaster to fill in a hole, but that is not what Cinderella's sisters bought. Here, it describes tiny cut-out shapes that fancy ladies stuck to their faces in France during the 17th century. Learn that the word latter means the latest thing that is listed, as when you say that you have 2 kinds of ice cream, chocolate and vanilla, and the latter (vanilla) is your favorite. The former, (chocolate) is your brother's favorite. If you are saying the word ladder, then you are talking about a large climbing frame used to help people reach high things safely.
3. Notice that the way a word SOUNDS, (or its phonetics) can change what it means. Example: latter is not the same thing as ladder.