Help and Deserving

This session is based on the story book The Little Red Hen and was devised by Steve Hoggins. The in this version is that the characters take opposite positions. One helps and the other doesn’t.

Key ideas:

When are you obliged to help people? Do some people deserve more than others?

Resources: 3 puppets

Starter - story

Introduce the first character:

Penguin (or whatever puppet / character you have) is very hungry and going to cook (ask children for ideas). Penguin heads down to the shops (mime walking, getting them to join in) and puts things in her shopping basket the flour, the milk, the butter, the chocolate etc. Finally Penguin pays and tries to lift the incredibly heavy bag home. Penguin pauses, wipes the sweat off her brow and asks for help.

Main activity

Introduce 2 puppets. One who says 'yes' to helping and one who says 'no'. Don’t let the puppets give reasons, that is for the children to come up with.

Task questions

Why did monkey (or whatever puppet / character you have) say ‘no’?

• Is what monkey said ok?
• Why?
• What should monkey say?

Why did Bear (insert appropriate character) say ‘yes’?

• Is what Bear said ok?
• Why?
• What should Bear say?

If they are unanimous in thinking that they should help penguin you may want to introduce some reasons through the voice of the puppet. Children often say things like you shouldn’t help if they're a stranger, maybe monkey is tired or they are not friends. Get monkey to give one of these reasons and see what they think of it.

Continue the story (you can do this in a second follow-up session) 

So bear and Penguin carry the bags home from the shop and Penguin gets the kitchen ready…the bowls, the spoons, emptying the shopping… and realises that there is a terrific amount of work to do so she pauses, wipes the sweat of her brow and calls out to bear and monkey, “This is a lot of work, can you help me?”

Task questions  

• Does anyone help?
• Why do they help?
• Should they help?

Final part of the story

Penguin finally puts the dish in the oven and waits for the ‘ping!’ that tells us it is ready…..PING!... Penguin tucks a napkin in to her collar and gets ready to gobble the the food. Just then Bear pipes in with “Could I have some?” shortly followed by monkey, “Could I have some?”

Penguin stops. Looks at bear. Looks at monkey. And then looks at her food.

Task questions

• Should penguin give some to bear?
• Should penguin give some to Monkey?
• If monkey didn’t help, should, penguin give him food?
• If monkey did help?

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