The Little Red Hen

Preschool is completing a unit on nursery rhymes, folk and fairy tales and the like. Each day I get to hear Julia's spin on one. A few days ago she was telling me the story of the Little Red Hen. Now if put on the spot (which I have come to learn is where parents of small children often reside), I could not immediately recall the finer points of this one. As she started the retell, though, I remembered it well. It is the story of a  little red hen with an unparalleled work ethic and her shiftless animal friends who stand idly by while the hen takes a grain of wheat full circle to a loaf of bread. I knew we had a copy of this story somewhere and so we read. When we reached the part where the hen asks who will help her harvest the wheat. I no sooner say, "Harvesting is when..." "I know," she interrupts never taking her face from the illustrations in front of her. Her sideways glance finds me and with that same corner of her mouth she says, "Harvesting is knifing it." We read on and now poor hen is looking for someone to help her thresh the wheat. I know better than to explain this one. I allow her to take the lead. Face still forward she tells me, "Threshing is smacking it." This she illustrates with with a couple of flat handed smacks to the air with her pudgy little paw. I was getting excited as I knew the wheat would soon be going to the mill and couldn't wait to hear her description of that. My excitement quickly ebbed, "I'm not sure. I think that's where they smash it up into flour." I should have known that it couldn't get much better than knifing or smacking.