Home Preschool Activity: Aesop’s Fable, Crow and the Pebbles

Try out this fun hands-on activity while telling the story about Aesop’s Fable about the crow, pitcher, and pebbles.

This was a big hit at my home. The preschoolers from my co op were all giggles because they got to wear socks on their hands and play with water and rocks. Who wouldn’t love it!

Supplies Needed:

You’ll need:

• 1 clean black sock for each person
• 1 long, narrow, clear container. . . cup, pitcher, or we used a flower vase (pitchers would take way too many pebbles for us)
• pebbles
• masking tape
• and the Aesop’s story of course!
• I simplified it and told the story as we did the activity.

Prep work.

Before bringing the kids around. Fill the container with all the pebbles you have, or however many can fit. Then fill the rest up with water till it reaches close to the top.

Then in another container, while holding in the rocks, pour out the water.

Then dump out the rocks onto a plate or pan to use later.

Now pour the water back into the container.

You now know that the water is the exact amount you’ll need to reach the top with the pebbles in, right?

It’s pretty embarrasing to start this activity off and find out that the poor crows still can’t get the water because you didn’t have the pebbles to water ratio figured out.

next grab some masking tape at put it around the container where the water line is now.

The kids will love comparing how much the water level is rising as they put the pebbles in the water.

Now with everything set up, you are ready for the story.

Gather the children around, and put a black sock on each child’s hand, and one on your own hand too.

Begin the story Of The Crow, Pebble, And Pitcher:

Note: although you can read out loud this story, it is better to just tell it from memory. Just remember to interject it with lots of questions, so that the little ones can practice thinking out problems for themselves. I modified the story to involve many little crows all helping together. Have fun with it!

“Once upon a time, there was a famine. Do you know what a famine is? It is when there is no rain for so so so long, that even all the rivers dry up. What happens if there is no water in the rivers? Where will the animals go to drink? The animals all must be very thirsty.

Well one of these animals is the big, black, beautiful crow! (raise your black-sock hand). And of course, all her beautiful baby crows! If you have a baby crow on your hand raise your baby crows in the air! (the kids raise their socked hands). Crows make a really beautiful sound. They CAH CAH! isn’t that lovely? Can the baby crows make that sound?

Awesome, now quiet down my little crows, we are all thirsty, and we need to find some water to drink. You see this river bed? (pointing to the plate of rocks) It’s all dried up and only pebbles are left. Where else can we look for water?

(they find the ‘pitcher’) Ah yes! a pitcher of water! It’s perfect. (your sock hand tries to ‘reach the water’ but can’t) Oh no! my beak can’t get the water to drink it. How are we going to get the water to our mouths? (let them come up with a few ideas).

Aha! I know we crows are very clever, and I have an idea. What would happen if I flew down and took a pebble in my mouth and flew back and dropped it into the pitcher. What would happen?

Let’s find out. (act it out with your hand and drop a pebble into the water, now look at the water line) I don’t know if that made much of a difference, maybe if everyone flies down, picks up a pebble in their mouth, flies back, and drops it in the pitcher, the water might rise.

(after everyone does it, look again at the water line. ask them to go back and forth, back and forth, till all the pebbles are in the pitcher)

Look at that! the water is at the top! now we can all drink the water. (pretend to drink it with your hand, and let everyone else do it too).

Once you are done, ask them what they thought of the crow.

Was the crow clever? Clever means that you can come up with ideas to fix problems. Sometimes we have a problem, but don’t know how to fix it. And sometimes we need to be clever and come up with a surprising idea that helps.

THE END

A moral to a story means “what can we learn from the story?”

This moral could be “little by little does the trick”

or “necessity is the mother of invention“

What do you think those mean?

(give your kids a chance to share their ideas).

What a smart and clever group of crows you all are!

I hope you had a fun time with your preschool age kids making an aesop’s fable come to life. I came up with this activity while doing a homeschool preschool co op for the Letter C (as in Crows). You can see the whole lesson plan here.