10 Little Red Hen Story Extension Activities to Boost Listening Comprehension
The Little Red Hen is a great book for helping children learn elements of a story and to immerse children in multisensory learning experiences.
Little Red Hen is a classic folktale teaching children concepts around various themes: hard work, teamwork and cooperation, farming and harvest, and perseverance. It’s also a cautionary tale about reaping what we sow.
It is a perfect tale to use with story extension activities. Story extension activities allow children to connect with themes and ideas in a story, explore the motivation of characters, and help reinforce vocabulary and concepts. They offer further learning and discovery by immersing children in multisensory experiences and learning activities that relate to the story.
Not to mention, these types of activities are great for helping reluctant readers become more excited about reading books or having books read aloud.
Below you’ll find extension activities that can be done when reading the fable of The Little Red Hen and a FREEBIE of The Little Red Hen storyboard, character cutouts and cards available for download.
1. Vocabulary Picture Hunt
What kid doesn’t love some form of ‘hide and seek’?
This type of activity helps build your child’s vocabulary, listening skills, and attention span.
This activity can be done in different ways:
1. Pictures (vocabulary cards) relating to The Little Red Hen can be hidden easily within one room and your child or student will need to find the picture you call out.
2. Your child can use the picture book to ‘hunt’ for the pictures of the words you say.
3. You can use I- Spy Printables such as the one shown here, where children have to find the picture of the words you say in the illustration.
2. Popsicle Stick Character Storytelling
Children can retell the story of Little Red Hen by using character popsicle sticks. These can be used to create a puppet play or live drama, either on their own or with an older sibling or parent.
Children can even practice the story a few times, have the opportunity to be recorded, and then watch themselves retell the story of Little Red Hen!
To help your child retell the story of The Little Red Hen, it can be helpful to first have your child complete a sequence storyboard (example below). They can then use this as a reference to help them remember the order and retell the story with greater independence.
The book, character sticks, and storyboard can be placed into a basket. Your child or student can pull these out and use them during quiet or reading time in the future. After having practiced retelling the story a few times, children may start acting out the story during imaginative play and even venture into making up a story version of their very own.
3. Storyboard Sequencing
Create a storyboard!
Children can practice summarizing and retelling the story of The Little Ren Hen by putting the main events of the story in the right sequence.
For young children, it is often best to have pictures relating to the story which can be put in order of how the events in the story unfold. Afterward, they can refer to the storyboard to help them retell the story.
The ability to sequence events is one of many important comprehension skills and helps children learn about the general format of how stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Storyboards also make a great visual tool to help children summarize the events of a story and retell the story to other family members or students.
4. ‘Let Me Read to You!’ Booklet
This activity combines printed pictures relating to the story, such as the vocabulary cards seen here, with your child or student’s own drawings or cut-outs to create a little booklet of The Little Red Hen.
Your little preschooler or kindergartener will be proud to read to you from their very own booklet.
If you are working on emergent writing skills, creating a little booklet of The Little Red Hen is perfect. This story is ideal because it contains many simple words for children to learn how to spell or trace, such as dog, cat, mouse, hen, mill, cake, bread, house, etc. These words are also excellent rhyming words and can be used in rhyming activities to help build your child or student’s ability to hear language sound patterns.
Instructions:
- Cut out pictures related to the story of The Little Red Hen. You can use our free printable available for download at the bottom of this blog as well.
- Work with your child or student to help put the pictures into the right sequence of how the events take place in the story.
- Your child can glue the pictures of one event onto each left page. The right page of the booklet can be used to colour their own picture of that event or add some related cut-out pictures. Another option is to use this page to practice spelling or tracing a word relating to the pictures.
- Follow step three for all the events, until the full story is laid out in picture format.
- Now take turns ‘reading’ the story of The Little Red Hen to each other using this one-of-a-kind picture book.
- Allow multiple opportunities for your child to be able to ‘read’ to you and to other family members, friends, or students!
This project provides children with lots of opportunities to practice listening, turn-taking, and summarizing.
5. Tiny Garden Growing Projects
Another activity that ties perfectly into the story of Little Red Hen is doing a growing project. This can be anything from a small bean or sunflower being grown in a cup, to growing herbs or strawberries in a planter pot or helping take care of a plot in the garden.
A quick and easy-growing project is to grow herbs or microgreens in eggshells. Your child can add googly eyes and a smile to the eggshells to give them each a little personality. Watch this tutorial on how to create these fun egg characters.
In a short period of time, these eggshells will look like they have ‘hair’. Children can name their little characters and have fun giving their egg creations mini ‘haircuts’.
Another fun idea is to grow grass heads! Again, this project provides an opportunity for youngsters to practice their scissor skills by becoming little hairdressers. Check out a fantastic tutorial by Red Ted Art here.
Discover Fun Early Literacy Activities for Little Learners
6. Baking Tasty Treats
This one is yummy!
Naturally, a favourite extension activity when reading The Little Red Hen is to do a simple baking activity where kids can help to create something yummy.
You can even have them grind down grain kernels using a mortar & pestle or coffee grinder to learn how grains become flour for baking!
Here are three great recipe ideas:
1. Simple Scones/Buiscuits
Here is a simple recipe for scones: (Add in any herbs or fruit to make different flavours).
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 3/4 cup milk (*I use oat milk or coconut milk from the carton, but any milk will do)
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
- Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix together.
- Next, add coconut oil. Using a pastry cutter or knives or forks, work the coconut oil into the flour mixture until it has the appearance of fine crumbs.
- Add the milk and gently knead until a soft dough is formed. Be sure to not over-knead this dough in order for scones/biscuits to remain soft.
- Roll out dough onto a lightly flour-dusted counter till about 1/2 inch thick. Biscuits can either be cut out using a round cookie or biscuit cutter or a drinking glass. The other option is to cut the dough into triangular shapes like you would a pizza or pie.
- Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone baking tray liner, leaving a little space in between each scone/biscuit.
- Brush the tops of these scones/biscuits with egg wash to give a beautiful golden finish (optional). Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, till they have risen slightly.
- Remove and serve immediately with butter and jam, or any topping of your choice.
2. Bread-in-a-Bag
Have you ever tried the bread-in-a-bag method? It’s a great hands-on bread-making experience for children. Little Bins, Little Hands has a great recipe with full instructions.
3. Make a Cake
If you need a little inspiration on getting your little one involved with making a cake, check out this incredible little baker’s tutorial. She even goes over simple safety rules of using an electric mixing bowl!
7. Farm Adventures!
Nothing can make the story of The Little Red Hen come more alive for children than going to a farm where children can gain an appreciation of where their food comes from and get the chance to pet, feed, hold, and care for farm animals!
Check out special events and programs at some of your local farms to build these incredible learning memories with your child or students!
An amazing extension activity is to head to a local farm or farm attraction in your area. Some farms even have summer camps for kids!
When it comes to learning about hens (and other animals), getting out to a real farm is such an incredible experience. I fondly remember how entertaining (and sometimes scary) chickens could be, how warm the eggs I collected were, how cute and soft baby chicks are, and how proud I was to milk a cow, alongside so many other great moments!
8. Egg Carton Character Craft
Create egg carton characters from The Little Red Hen!
This is the perfect opportunity to discuss the character traits and qualities of each character, to ask children about which is their favourite character and why, and to dive into open-ended comprehension questions.
If you haven’t yet seen this cute idea done yet for the main characters of favourite children’s books, you’re in for a treat. This perfect recyclable craft idea is ideal as an extension activity for children’s books involving animal characters. Get a full video tutorial here.
Choose to do all the characters in the book or an even better idea …create a memorable character’s portrait studio! Select a few favourite children’s picture books with memorable main characters and make an egg carton character craft for each one.
This is the perfect time to engage your child or student in conversation about the story and characters. You can prompt your little one with questions and reflections to spark creative and critical thinking. I’ve found the best ones are those that begin with phrases like “I wonder…”, “What do you think would happen if…”, “I imagine if…”, and “If you could…”.
9. All About Hens!
Why not use the story of Little Red Hen as an introduction to learning all about chickens, roosters, and hens in particular!
Children will love learning about how chickens evolved from dinosaurs and are the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex)!
Fun chicken fact: Did you know chickens have better colour vision than humans? Apparently, that’s because their eyes have five different types of receptors in their retina, as opposed to humans who only have two types: rods and cones.
The following resources have helpful articles and videos explaining where chickens live, what they eat, how they hatch and grow, how to care for chickens, and other fun and interesting facts.
All about chickens at kids.britannia.com
Fun facts about chickens from carolinacoops.com
Stages of a Chicken’s Life Cycle
Stages of a Chicken’s Life Cycle & Caring for Chickens by thehappychickencoop.com
10. Mini Theater Performance
Turn a Little Red Hen read-aloud into an impromptu theater performance. With just a few costumes or props and a whole lot of enthusiasm, children can enjoy re-enacting part of the story during independent free play or with other family members.
Perhaps the whole family can get involved in creating a mini skit and invite one or two other families over for a family-led production of The Little Red Hen!
Some Prop Ideas: apron, chef’s hat, character headbands, toy bread or cake, cake pan or bread pan, small kitchen, baking tools and utensils, a fake plant, safe gardening tools, and gloves.
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Hi, I’m Julie, the passionate creator of Ox & Owl Literacy. I enjoy empowering families and educators with wonderful resources to inspire fun, imaginative, and joyful learning opportunities for young kiddos. You’ll find lots of recommended books, reading resources, and creative learning activities on this site aiming to help children fall in love with language, books, reading, and the transformational power of stories.
