A fairy tale is the genre which is well represented in preschool education programmes as well as in the curriculum of general primary education. A fairy tale is an important means for developing children's verbal creativity and their logical thinking. A fairy tale stimulates children's imagination, prepares them for the future life in the real world, broadens their horizons, fosters not only moral and ethical values but also the right attitude to the world. Folk tales were not initially created for children. Adults displayed their own mythological ideas about the world, nature and a man by means of these encoded texts. Over time a fairy tale lost its meaning in the life of adults and was transferred to children becoming part of their everyday reading. A child admires a fairy tale, its fantasy, but does not understand everything. «The Cubes of V. Y. Propp» represent the means and the techniques that help the child to understand the structure of a tale, its content, morality and allegory. Y.Propp proved that a fairy tale is illustrative of the fact that there was a system of various taboos in the life of our ancestors. All these prohibitions gradually formed moral and ethical principles, legal rules and laws of human behavior in society. In the structure of a fairy tale, V. Y. Propp names several main elements, the so-called «The Cubes of V. Y. Propp», namely «absentation», «interdiction», «violation of the interdiction», «departure», «first function of the donor», «hero’s reaction», «receipt of a magical agent», «victory», «return», «happy ending». This structure of a fairy tale serves its magical or ritual function, which makes a fairy tale resemble such an archaic genre as an incantation. In a fairy tale like in an incantation, a magical ritual action and a magical verbal formula are intrinsically linked, and therefore in a fairy tale a taboo as well as a potential punishment are often depicted. Y.Propp's schemes clearly show the typical structure, «models of fairy tales», according to which their «building material» can be defined: fairy tales have sets of «cubes», i.e. typical plot elements, situations, taboos and symbolic actions. And this is also the basis for the differentiation of the works of this folklore genre: some fairy texts have the whole set of «cubes», but there is also such a type of fairy tales in which some of the «cubes» are missing with a particular purpose. The article offers an analysis of fairy tales based on the structure of «V. Y. Propp's cubes». Such an analysis of fairy tales will help preschool and primary school students to understand the content of fairy tales, their morality and allegory. Creative tasks with «V. Y. Propp's cubes» will provide children with the clues to independent creativity, which may result in composing their own fairy tales.
Development of Animation-Based Fairy Tales Learning Model for Elementary School Students