Activities for Children and Parents
Based on the classic tales of The Gingerbread Man, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs and The Little Red Hen.
Creative play provides a solid foundation to promote early learning and future success. Below are a number of hands-on activities, which you can do at home with your young children.
 Language Arts
- Visit your local library and select books that are age appropriate and of special interest to your child. Find other versions of stories such as The Three Little Pigs. Ask your librarian for suggestions. Make reading a part of your daily routine.
- Have your children make their own books by drawing their own version of one of the stories such as The Little Red Hen. Talk about the sounds the different animals make in their stories and have them think of rhyming words. (It is fine if they are nonsense words.)
- Reread Goldilocks and the Three Bears and ask your child to tell you other words that begin with the same sounds as words in the story (e.g. bears, Goldilocks, porridge, papa, mama, etc.)
- Practice rhyming: rhyme your child’s name with real or nonsense words. Write the rhymes down for the child to see. Try writing the word “man” and “_an: on paper. Have your child give you a letter to put in the blank. Use words from the story The Gingerbread Man or chose your own.
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 Creative Arts
- Make a painting based upon the story of the The Little Red Hen or other stories.
- Glue popsicle sticks, wood scraps, twigs, straw and cardboard (colored like bricks) to an empty milk carton to create your own houses like The Three Little Pigs.
- Find pictures of bears from storybooks or magazines. Talk about features that all bears have in common (e.g. two eyes, a snout, fur, etc.) and have children draw their own bear faces. Have them (or you) cut out the shape of the bear face to make a mask. String yarn through a hole punched on each side of the mask and wear!
- Talk about the faces of the characters in the story of The Gingerbread Man. Let each child select their favorite character and construct a face from a rice cake and various toppings such as cream cheese and/or peanut butter, O-shaped cereal, shredded carrots, and raisins. Talk about similarities and differences between faces.
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 Performing Arts
- Use clothes from your closet (or decorate brown paper bags) as costumes and act out one of the four stories.
- Make pig, hen, bear, gingerbread or wolf puppets out of old socks. Glue or sew on buttons for noses and eyes. Create a puppet show.
- Have children draw and cut out bear ears and then glue or tape onto headbands. Ask the children to draw three paper beds and tape them to the floor so your child can reenact the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
- Put out materials such as tissue, construction, and cellophane papers, toothpicks or straws from old brooms, and empty paper towel holders (to make tree trunks). Reread The Gingerbread Man and ask your child to create the flowers, fields, leafy-treed forest, and the rippling river. Ask the children to draw their version of a gingerbread man, cut it out, and act out the story using the cut-out and the scenery.
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 Cooking
- Using your favorite cookie dough recipe or mix, flatten dough into circles and decorate with chocolate chips or raisins to make faces of characters from one of the stories.
- Using your favorite bread recipe, bake with your child. Talk about how the dough changes as you add the different ingredients and how it changes when it is baked. Talk about the story of The Little Red Hen.
- Make “Teddy Bear Trail Mix” with 1 box Teddy Grahams ®, raisins, nuts, dried bananas, cranberries, and other dried fruits. Talk about Goldilocks and the Three Bears and why people might pack a snack such as trail mix when they go hiking through the woods.
- You will need cinnamon sticks and ground cinnamon, ginger root and ground ginger, sugar cane (if possible) and sugar, food coloring, with dropper, disposable cups, and water to create a Gingerbread Man soda shop. Explain how cinnamon, ginger, and sugar all come from plants and let children create their own original drinks.
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 Diversity
- For families in which parents speak a language other than English, read one of the stories such as The Little Red Hen in both languages and talk about the differences.
- Read Houses and Homes by Ann Morris. Talk about homes in the story of The Three Little Pigs. Ask your children to describe your home and talk about things they like about it. Have them draw their dream homes on paper and discuss that as well.
- Find pictures of different types of bears, such as polar bears, panda bears, and brown bears from books, magazines or websites. Ask your children what differences they see. How are bears and people similar? How are they different?
- Play Cerdito, Cerdito, Zorrito! (Little Pig, Little Pig, Little Fox!). The game is a simple variation on “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Players sit in a circle and the child that is IT, or the Niño de Jengibre (Gingerbread Boy) walks around touching each head saying “Cerdito.” When the Niño de Jengibre says “Jengibre,” the tagged player, Zorrito, chases the Niño de Jengibre around the circle twice. If Zorrito fails to tag the Niño de Jengibre before he/she reaches the empty space in the circle, then Zorrito becomes the Niño de Jengibre.
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 Math
- Talk about concepts such as "bigger" and "smaller." Compare the sizes of animals in The Little Red Hen.
- Read "Just Three" by William Wise in Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young. Ask your child to think of other stories such as The Three Little Pigs with numbers in them. Use household objects and practice counting and grouping in threes. Play tic-tac-toe and try to make a line of three Xs or Os.
- Have the children measure different objects found in Goldilocks and the Three Bears (such as chairs, beds, and bowls) with a ruler. Have them compare the sizes and sort by size.
- Have children count out five raisins onto a table. Instruct them to take one away, placing it on the plate or paper. Ask what happens when two have been taken away, how many are left? What about when four are taken away? Play with the five raisins counting forward and backward. Relate the raisins to the eyes and the buttons of the Gingerbread Man.
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 Science
- Plant different types of fast growing seeds, such as grass, radishes, or alfalfa, in a small amount of dirt in a paper cup. Keep the soil moist. As they sprout, talk about the ways in which the plants are the same or different and discuss the plants found in The Little Red Hen.
- Find natural materials such as leaves or dandelions or use confetti and pinwheels. Have your child imitate the huffing and puffing of the wolf and talk about how and why those objects move. Discuss why, in the Three Little Pigs story, the straw and stick houses might fall down, but not the brick one.
- Ask your children how they think animals such as the ones in Goldilocks and the Three Bears find their food when they cannot see. Have children pretend to be bears and set different ‘smelly’ foods (e.g. spices, honey, fish, etc.) in separate covered jars with holes punched in the top. Have them try to guess the ingredients of the jars.
- Set out spices and ingredients from your kitchen such as flour, salt, sugar, baking soda, and ginger root. Give your children each a cup of water and ask them to predict what will happen to each ingredient when mixed into water with a spoon or popsicle stick. Introduce the word “dissolve.” Talk about what happens to ingredients in gingerbread.
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 Social/Emotional Development
- Read Friends by Helme Heine. Have your child draw a picture of a friend and have your child talk about friendship. Discuss ways in which the characters in The Little Red Hen, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and The Three Little Pigs might have become friends.
- Ask children to think of something each one is good at doing. Would you ever tell anyone that you are the best person in the whole world at doing that thing? If you would, you are being boastful or bragging about what you can do. Talk about how this might make others feel. Do you think it is good or bad to boast? Why? In the story of The Gingerbread Man, who is it that boasts? What happened because of it?
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