🌿 The Little Red Hen
Presentation of the 3 Sessions
👦🏻 Target age: 5–6 years old.
⏰ Duration: about 30 minutes.
🎯Educational objectives
This workshop invites the teacher to guide students in building mental images, based on a well-known traditional tale, “The Little Red Hen” by Byron Barton:
👉 Discover the story in the appendix (see below).
💬 Why this story?
This story presents the steps followed by the Little Red Hen to bake a cake (sowing a grain of wheat, harvesting the wheat ear, making flour, baking the cake). At each step she asks for help from the others (a cat, a pig and a duck), but none of them want to participate. However, once the cake is ready, everyone wants to taste it!
This workshop invites students to represent each step precisely: the meaning of words, the gestures involved, and the tone of the voices. The teacher guides the students in a sensory representation of the story. Each of the three sessions aims to go further in visualizing the story by increasingly engaging students in constructing meaning.
Various translations of the story are available here:
🧩 Sequence plan
| Session 1 |
Discovery of a simplified version of the story of the Little Red Hen. Collective enrichment of the sensory environment of each stage of the story. The teacher tells the story integrating the elements contributed by the students. |
|---|---|
| Session 2 |
The teacher tells the story integrating the elements contributed by the students during the previous session.
Retelling the cake-making process integrating the elements and gestures proposed by the students. |
| Session 3 |
Review of the story integrating the elements contributed by the students during the previous sessions. Exploration of gestures and voice characteristics of each character, then integration into the repeating dialogue. |
“The Little Red Hen”
The Little Red Hen is walking along the path with her little chicks. She pecks at the ground, finds a grain of wheat, and says:
“Cluck, cluck, cluck! Who will help me plant this grain of wheat?
— Quack, quack! Not me! says the duck.
— Oink! Not me! says the pig.
— Meow! Not me! says the cat.
— Cluck, cluck, cluck! Oh well, I’ll do it myself, with my little chicks.”
And she plants the grain of wheat, then waters it.
The grain grows into a shoot, a stalk, and then a beautiful ear of wheat.
When the ear of wheat is ripe, the Little Red Hen says:
“Cluck, cluck, cluck! Who will help me harvest this ear of wheat?
— Quack, quack! Not me! says the duck.
— Oink! Not me! says the pig.
— Meow! Not me! says the cat.
— Cluck, cluck, cluck! Oh well, I’ll do it myself, with my little chicks.”
And she harvests the ear of wheat.
When the wheat has been harvested, the Little Red Hen says:
“Cluck, cluck, cluck! Who will help me make a cake with this wheat?
— Quack, quack! Not me! says the duck.
— Oink! Not me! says the pig.
— Meow! Not me! says the cat.
— Oh well, I’ll do it myself, with my little chicks.”
Then the Little Red Hen crushes the wheat to make flour.
With the flour, she makes a good cake and puts it in the oven to bake.
When the cake is baked, the Little Red Hen says:
“Cluck, cluck, cluck! Who will help me eat this delicious cake?
— Quack, quack! Me! says the duck.
— Oink! Me! says the pig.
— Meow! Me! says the cat.
— Cluck, cluck, cluck! No, no, no! You did not help me make it, so you will not help me eat it! I will eat it myself, with my little chicks!”
Chirp chirp chirp, my story is finished!