Chicken in a Basket Game

Chicken in the Basket Game by Amber Greene

When finishing my daily story, I always like to use a little transition game to help the children move gently and purposefully from the story to wash our hands for morning tea. This is my little hen game that I often use after "The Little Red Hen" Story. It is called 'The chicken in a basket".

All children sit around in a circle formation, sitting on their mushroom cushions after storytime. I carry the basket that holds two hand-crafted felt chickens. I show the children the chickens, as I say to them,

"Hide your eyes, from the skies".

I also demonstrate the action of hiding my eyes behind my hands.

When eyes are hidden, I sing,

"Two chickens in the basket, Two chickens I can see
The chickens go a-hiding, I wonder where they'll be"

During the song, I walk around the circle behind the children. I carefully place a chicken in the laps of two different children.  For an extra challenge for the older ones, I place it behind their backs.

We then sing,

"1 2 3, look and see
Where, oh where, can the chickens be??"

To which we hear cries of "I have one".

The children return the chickens to my basket and head off with their parents to wash their hands, satisfied that they have had a turn. Children 3 and older can also participate in the handing out of the chickens.  In this case, I have two baskets and each child puts their chicken in one. They carry their basket and place their chicken into a lap or behind the back of their chosen friend on the next song.

In playgroup situations, every child has a turn each week, no matter how long it takes us. With a classroom situation (with children 5-6 years old), I may choose to either use more chicken props or only play the game through only 3 or 4 times. These children also learn that sometimes they will have a turn, whilst other times they may not (an example of what happens in real life) and so long as they have at least one turn over the week, most children of 5 1/2 -6 can cope with this as part of their transition to entering formal schooling.

Different learning takes place depending on where the chicken is placed.  Placing a chicken or prop behind a child's back requires them to open up new faculties of listening.  In western societies, most education and learning takes place in front of children's eyes, such as scanning a blackboard, reading a text or writing on a page.  Visual learning, including the all important non-verbal cues a teacher gives through their movements and facial expressions, is often overvalued to the detriment of auditory and kinesthetic (body action) input. Sadly, this skews modern day educational success towards the children who are primarily visual learners.  Anything we can do then to even up the portals of input is beneficial for those children whose main style of learning is something other than visual but can benefit everyone by bringing the senses into balance.

Secondly, many children spend so much time being 'still' (for example, during screen time) that they don't even have an awareness of the parts of their body they can't see or reach. A 'hiding game' like this one forces their intelligence into different parts of their body and supports this 'opening'. Another great way to make them more flexible in body and thinking!