A Rose By Any Other Name...Celebrating Red Rose Day

It Was the Time of Roses

David Murray, 1914

"But he who dares not grasp the thorn, should never crave the rose.” -  Anne Brontë

June 12 Red Rose Day so below is a bit of history and some stories to share. You will also find stories from England, Romania, Italy, Portugal and other countries, easy crafts to share with the children, and curriculum to make your classrooms bloom with delight!

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROSES

• Roses are a symbol of love, beauty, war and politics.
• According to fossil evidence, roses are 35 million years old.
• There are 150 species of roses throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
• Cultivation of roses began in China 5000 years ago.
• During the Roman period roses were grown extensively in the Middle East.
• Nero dumped tons of rose petals on his dinner guests.
• Cleopatra had her living quarters filled with the petals of roses so that when Marc Antony met her, he would long remember her every time he smelt a rose.
• Rose hips have been found in Europe and petrified rose wreaths have been unearthed from ancient Egyptian tombs.
• The first known paintings of a rose are actually frescoes. The earliest example was discovered in Crete around 1600 B.C.

Above information found at:

http://urbanext.illinois.edu/roses/history.cfm http://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/miscellaneous/flowersandhistory/history-of-roses

STORIES

The Blue Rose – China

http://www.civprod.com/storylady/stories/TheBlueRose.htm

The Daughter of the Rose – Romania

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/rft/rft06.htm

The Elf of the Rose – Hans Christian Andersen

http://hca.gilead.org.il/elf_rose.html

Legend of the Cherokee Rose – Native American
http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/LegendOfTheCherokeeRose-Cherokee.html 

The Legend of the Christmas Rose - Italy

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=steedman&book=italy&story=rose

Little Wild-Rose – Romania
http://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/Romanian_folktale_9.html

The Maiden with the Rose on Her Forehead - Portugal

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/books/portugual/pedroso/maidenwithrose.html

The Nightingale and the Rose – Oscar Wilde

http://www.artpassions.net/wilde/nightingale.html

The Rose - Grimm

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm203.html

The Rose Beauty – Turkey

http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/ftft/ftft07.htm

The Rose Tree – England

http://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/English_folktale_3.html

The Snail and the Rose Tree – Hans Christian Andersen

http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=rhead&book=andersen&story=snail

The Three Roses – Czechoslovakia

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kog/kog13.htm

CRAFTS

Enchanted Learning – This site offers a wide variety of flower crafts along with word searches and printable classroom activities.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/flowers/

Rose Tissue Paper Flowers

http://www.littlemisscraft.com/Rose_Tissue_Paper_Flower-10_1

CURRICULUM

Teacher’s Guide – Lessons plans, printouts, white board activities, coloring books and more. Your classroom will be blooming in no time at all!

http://www.theteachersguide.com/plantsflowers.htm

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE

Birds, Bees and Butterflies - Since flowers attract our winged friends, here is a previous blog post, filled with fun songs and fingerplays for the wee ones.

http://www.theteachersguide.com/plantsflowers.htm

Karen Chace 2014 ©

This blog post was researched and compiled by Karen Chace. Permission for private use is granted. Distribution, either electronically or on paper is prohibited without my expressed written permission. For permission please contact me at storybug@aol.com. Of course, if you wish to link to my blog via your website, blog, newsletter, Facebook page or Twitter please feel free to do so; I greatly appreciate your support and personal integrity.

Public Domain II - Folktales, Myths and Legends Oh My!

As promised, I have put together another list of public domain books from around the world.

The picture to the left portrays the third century Syrian Queen Zenobia by illustrator Warwick Goble. She is considered to be one of the most underrated heroines of ancient times.

Her pedigree comes from a long line of queens from Syrian & Abyssinian queens, including the well-known Queen of Sheba. After her husband’s death she led a revolt again the Roman Empire and added Egypt to her expanding empire as well.





She was said to be more beautiful than Cleopatra and was a scholar in her own right.  Besides her native tongue she was fluent in Greek, Aramaic, and Egyptian, with a working knowledge of Latin. She was renowned for hosting literary salons and surrounding herself with philosophers and poets, the most famous of these being
Cassius Longinus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenobia

In honor of this ancient Queen and her love of language and cultures, I give you folktales, fairy tales, epics and legends from many lands.

Australian Legendary Folktales - Collected by Katie Langloh Parker with an introduction by Andrew Lang. Stories of emus, bats, magpies and more. Learn about this lovely land down under. http://tinyurl.com/yackb55

Belgian Fairy Tales by William Elliot Griffis, 1919 - Step into this enchanted text filled with queens, ogres, pilgrims and faeries.

http://www.archive.org/details/belgianfairytale00grifiala

The Book of the Epic – The Worlds Great Epics Told in Story by H. A. Guerber, 1913. Visit France, Portugal, Netherlands, Japan and more through these epics from around the world. http://tinyurl.com/6edwz4f

Chinese Fables and Folk Stories – by Mary Hayes Davis, Chow-Leung. The Snail and the Bees, Woo Sing and the Mirror, Two Mother and a Child, are just a few of the tales found within the pages of this book from 1908.
http://tinyurl.com/yda28q4

Clever Stories from Many Nations by John Saxe, 1865. Interesting adaptation of stories, all told in rhyme.
http://www.archive.org/details/cleverstories00saxerich

The Folktales of the Magyars translated by Jones and Kroph, 1886. The Speaking Grapes, The Smiling Apple and the Tinkling Apricot is just one of many interesting tales from the people of Hungary.http://www.archive.org/details/folktalesofmagya00joneuoft

Yule-tide stories - A collection of Scandinavian and North German popular tales and traditions, from the Swedish, Danish and German, 1910. This book can be downloaded to your computer or Kindle.  http://tinyurl.com/6k57ktf

Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend by Donald Alexander Mackenzie, 1917. Fairies, friends and foes fill this volume of stories from mythical Scotland.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/tsm/index.htm

And if you missed the first blog post of public domain story collections in May go to:

http://karenchace.blogspot.com/2011/05/public-domain-folktales-myths-legends.html