These Little Red Hen activities are a fantastic resource for teachers and parents, providing countless opportunities to develop key skills in Personal, Social and Emotional development, Math’s, Literacy, Fine Motor Control, and Understanding the World to name just a few. With its simple structure, repetitive language, and strong moral message, this story is ideal for engaging young learners while fostering essential early development. Don’t forget to grab your free story map and your free gift at the bottom of the page!
Table of Contents
Little Red Hen Activities – Communication and Language
Story Retell: Use talk for writing to support children in retelling the story of ‘The Little Red Hen’. Don’t forget to get your free story map to help the children to remember the sequence using some of the cut out characters in the pack.
Little Red Hen Activities – Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Values and Social Skills: Discuss the importance of helping others, sharing, and working together as a team.
Little Red Hen Activities – Literacy
The Little Red Hen naturally supports early literacy skills. The repetitive phrases and predictable storyline help children with sequencing, comprehension, and language development. Here’s how you can incorporate it into your literacy lessons:
Story Sequencing: Print out my images from the story and encourage children to arrange them in order, reinforcing their understanding of narrative structure. For those beginning writers, there is a space underneath the pictures to do some labelling. If your children are not ready to develop this skill there are simpler options in the pack also.
Role-Playing and Retelling: Provide props for children to act out the story, helping them build confidence in spoken language. Print off the characters in my pack and incorporate them into your small world trays. Why not have a bakery role play area.
Phonics and Rhyming: Focus on key vocabulary such as ‘hen’ and encourage children to write a list of rhyming words. Visit BBC Teach to listen to a number of farmyard sounds as well as rhymes and stories.
Shared Writing: Encourage children to write their own story or create their own version by changing the characters or setting. Why not complete the speech bubbles to illustrate what the characters might be saying.
Children can use the vocabulary sheets included to support them with their writing.
Little Red Hen Activities – Mathematics
Maths can be woven into storytelling activities in engaging ways. The Little Red Hen presents opportunities for counting, measuring, and problem-solving:
Counting and Sorting: Use props like grains of wheat to encourage counting exercises or use my worksheets with the little red hen characters to reinforce counting skills.
Number Recognition and Ordering: There are 10 numbered eggs which can be cut out and used in many different ways to support number recognition and the sequencing of numbers.
Baking Measurements: Simulate the bread-making process by measuring ingredients, introducing concepts of weight, volume, and number.
Ordinal Numbers: Discuss the order of events in the story (first, next, last) to strengthen sequencing skills. These ordinal numbers have been included on some of my sequencing sheets.
Simple Addition and Subtraction: Pose questions like “If the Hen has five grains of wheat and plants two more, how many does she have in total?”. Use the Little Red Hen addition sheets once the children are ready for more formal recording.
Five and Ten Frames: Five and ten frames are great for lots of aspects of math’s. Link them to the little red hen theme and use eggs to count to make them even more appealing!
Shape: Use the shape egg to support with the recognition and properties of shape or make a shape picture of the little red hen.
Little Red Hen Activities – Fine Motor Control
Fine motor skills are crucial in the early years, and The Little Red Hen offers many hands-on activities to strengthen tiny muscles:
- Dough Play: Let children knead and shape dough to mimic the bread-making process, enhancing hand strength and coordination. Check out my play dough recipe for the best play dough ever!
- Cutting and Sticking: Provide cut-and-paste sequencing activities with pictures from the story.
- Colouring Pictures: Use the pictures in my pack for children to colour or to carefully join the dots.
- Mark-Making and Writing: Encourage children to ‘write’ their own shopping lists or draw story elements, refining pencil control.
Little Red Hen Activities – Understanding The World
This timeless story provides a gateway for discussions about the world, food production and life cycles:
Farm-to-Table Exploration: Teach children where food comes from by discussing wheat farming and bread-making.
Animal Roles on a Farm: Explore different animals and their functions on a farm, expanding children’s knowledge of rural life.
Growth and Change: Grow wheatgrass in the classroom to demonstrate plant life cycles in a hands-on way and record using my free sheet. Look at the life cycle of a hen and give children the opportunity to record their knowledge using my life cycle sheet.
This rich, multi-faceted approach ensures that The Little Red Hen becomes more than just a story—it transforms into a meaningful learning experience that nurtures curiosity, creativity, and collaboration in young learners.
If you would like a copy of the pack then visit my shop where you will find lots more resources and traditional tales.