Tikki Tikki Tembo - Folktales in First Grade

We talked about folktales in first grade this week, how “folk” means people and “tale” means story.  And how a long time ago, before computers or video games or televisions and even before books, people used to tell stories for entertainment.  These stories were passed along through the generations, and details about the countries/cultures from  where the story originated became a part of these stories.  Tikki Tikki Tembo is a Chinese folktale which explains why Chinese families give their children very short names.

It was fun reading Arlene Mosel's version of this tale aloud, and students chimed in every time I had to read the main character’s long, 50-letter name: Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo- chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.  We talked about how long their names were in comparison.  Some were short (4 letters) and others were long (10 letters).  A classic!