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First-graders explore ‘The Little Red Hen’
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .While making play-doh, Cooper Wilson (far right) was responsible for adding oil to the mixture. Fellow first-graders Arlo Ifft (left) and Grace Leslie watched Wilson's progress.
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .First-grader pals Madalyn Rauzan (left) and Rebecca Walsh showed each other some of the creative things they made with their play-doh on Jan. 18.
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Neighbors | Sarah Foor .The students of Marilyn Lordi's first-grade classroom learned about teamwork during the Little Red Hen story time by making play-doh. Ethan Macabobby (left) watched as his friend Noah Dunlap (right) started the play-doh with a bag of flour.
By SARAH FOOR
In the tale of “The Little Red Hen,” the industrious bird asks for help from her friends as she grows, harvests and grinds wheat and then uses flour to make bread. However, she is always rebuffed by her so-called pals.
MetroParks Farm educator Kim Moff visited the first-graders at St. Christine School on Jan. 18 to share lessons based on the adventures of “The Little Red Hen.”
The educator taught the students about helping friends and working together, but also used the hen’s tale as a tool to teach the students about the modern production of wheat.
Moff showed the students stalks of real wheat and pointed out the root, stem and head of the plant. She explained how combines harvest wheat on large farms throughout the world and had students guess the many delicious foods that come from wheat and wheat flour.
To test out what flour can do, Moff invited students to work together to create play-doh from a mixture of flour, salt, water, vegetable oil and kool-aid mix.
“We’re not going to be like the little red hen – we’re going to help each other during this project. Everyone’s job is important today,” she explained.
The students in Marilyn Lordi’s first-grade class used teamwork to add and incorporate the ingredients and then the teacher asked her students to get creative.
“Make something with your play-doh and we’ll all take a guess what it is,” Lordi offered.
The first-graders showed their creativity with play-doh snowmen, snakes, meatballs and taco shells, and shared laughs over some of the wrong guesses along the way.