Summary

Mei Mei has the six happiest hens in China.  She gives them fresh hay and baths, and when she calls to them, Gu-gu-gu-gu! they all run to her as fast as they can.  But one of the hens, Daisy, was not always so happy.  She was the smallest and the other hens used to pick on her, flapping their wings, squawking and pecking.  Then one night Daisy was asleep in a basket when it drifted out onto the river.  She woke up facing a barking dog, and suddenly Daisy was doing some pecking, squawking and wing-flapping of her own!

Jan Brett's Home Page

Predictions/Wonderings - There is a point in the book where the author states, "Daisy wondered what would happen next."  This is a good time to stop and have students make predictions and wonderings about what they think will happen next.

Visualizing/Creating Mental Images - The author uses such descriptive writing in this story.  Try reading a page or two without showing the students the illustrations.  Have them draw on a sheet of paper what pictures they are creating in their minds.  You could fold a piece of paper into 4 quadrants and stop four different times and have them visualize.  Remember not to show them the pictures. Read the story once without the pictures and then after they have shared their pictures, reread the book and allow them to see the beautiful illustrations!

Making Connections - Have students read and look at other Jan Brett books, such as The Hat or The Mitten.  Students can make Text-to-Text connections based on the pictures alone, not to mention her use of animals in all of her stories.
 

Notable Words, Phrases, & Quotes - Listed below are some words and phrases that you may want to discuss with your students before you begin to read the story.

 “fluffed up their feathers”
 “crowded her off the perch”
 “finders keepers”
 “His face was like stone.”
jostled
bobbing
current
stone jetty
squawked
banyan tree
cormorants
Happy Hens basket

Onamontapia - Peck! --- Thump! --- Lap, lap, lap ---Scratch, scratch --- Bump
 

Discuss how friendship and meeting other people (or animals!) help us grow as humans.

• K/1 Math Idea - The story ends with the phrase..."just six happy hens".  Have students come up with the combinations/fact families to 6.

• Print the Chinese Animal Year from Jan Brett's website.  Use a graph to record the animal signs of the students.

• Have your students learn how to write their animal sign in Chinese characters!  This Animated Chinese Character website shows them how step-by-step!  Look for Jan

• Have students color the page of Daisy and her friends and then write a paragraph about the animals.

• Examine the illustrations to find the animals in the mountains.  Compare the illustrations to this photograph from World Book Online of the limestone hills near the city of Guilin.

• Discuss how Jan Brett uses the corner illustrations to forecast the story.

• Discover more about China and it's culture, geography, and people by visiting the new online resource, CultureGrams.  Students can even learn how to pronounce some words in Chinese!