“His cookie is bigger!”
“I want the piece with the MOST frosting.”
Children are little observers and they are comparing all the
time, especially when it relates to them –“ I
can jump higher”, “my daddy is
bigger.’ The trick is to transfer their
observations to relate to a broader world, especially as they step into the
academic classroom. The Core Curriculum
affirms “identifying similarities and differences” is important even in the
Preschool classroom.
I use storytelling to start a compare and contrast
discussion with very young children. I
start by telling two stories that have the same object – a cooking pot. My first story is Anansi and the Bean Pot. Grandmother Spider tells Anansi
not to touch the bean pot cooking on the stove while she is out buying spices
at the market. But, Anansi loves beans
and his desire gets the best of him. He
is lured to the bean pot first by the smell, then remembering their taste, then
seeing Grandma’s Spider’s ladle by the pot. When Grandma Spider returns, Anansi tries to hide the beans he scooped out of the pot and into his hat by hastily jamming the hat onto his head. The beans
burn Anansi’s scalp, making him sweat and cry. When caught by Grandma Spider, Anansi takes off his hat to reveal that
the beans have scorched his hair off. (The story sounds a bit gruesome, but preschoolers enjoy nothing more
than to see me pretend to be Anansi in exaggerated pain. It brings down the house.)
My second story is my rendition of the classic Grimms tale, The Magic Porridge
Pot. (Paul Galdone has a good print version for young listeners.) A young girl, Emily,
tries to help her mother out when there is no food in the house. Emily meets up with a magical old woman who
gives her a pot that makes porridge using some special directions. The pot makes magical porridge the first
time. The next time the mother needs to
use the pot, Emily is at school. The
mother forgets how to stop the porridge from cooking and the porridge overflows,
running down the street like a porridge river.
Emily saves the day by running through the porridge and using the magic
words to stop the pot from cooking.
When I tell these stories, I purposefully do not describe
the pot, except to say that Anansi’s pot is on the stove, and I “show” Emily carrying the magic pot home. In the second story, I do take time to
interact with my young listeners when describing the delicious, magic
porridge. It smells of brown sugar and
maple syrup and even pancakes … and I prompt them to tell me how it
smells. I get everything from ice cream
to grilled cheese. There are two places
in the story where their imaginations are engaged with the porridge
descriptions.
After the tellings, I take out two pieces of paper. At the top of one I write “Anansi’s Bean
Pot,” on the other, “Emily’s Porridge Pot.” As I’m writing, I ask the children to tell me what was cooking in each
pot. Then I say, “Both pots are the same
because they are used for cooking. The
pots might also be different. Do you
think they are the same size? Which pot
do you think is bigger?”
Because of the way I portrayed the stories, the children
usually tell me that the Porridge Pot is bigger. Then I look for another similarity: they both
have handles because they both need to be carried. Then I ask them about color and other
differences. Usually, the magic pot is
more colorful. Often the children will
say that the magic pot has a spoon with it; the bean pot has a lid. (The spoon
is an important part of the magic instructions, and at one point in the Anansi
story, Anansi lifts the lid to “just smell” the baking beans.)
This compare and contrast exercise can be as detailed or as
summarized as time and age level allow.
In small groups, the children can actually color the pots. With older children, they can go back to
their desks and draw the two pots. I
always end with a reflection on not just the similarities and differences
between the pots, but also the stories.
For example, in the Anansi story, Anansi got into trouble. In The Magic Porridge Pot, Emily was a
helper; it was the mother who got into a bit of trouble.
Compare and contrast, or similarities and differences, is a
great foundation for future story readers and storytellers. After all, isn’t every classic tale about
how the main character is both the same and different in the end. For the storyteller, examining and
highlighting the similarities and contrasts as the story develops can assure
and interesting tale.
Other "cooking pot" stories:
