The Garden-Grown Bird: discussion sheet

Part One: The First Courtesy · about 7 minutes to read aloud · Theme: emerging voice

A gardener builds a copper bird that learns every birdsong in her garden, and people come from three villages to listen. Then it must ask what a borrowed song owes.

Choose a question to talk over, or try the activity with words and pictures.

Start here

Which sounds does the Bird put into the first song of its own?

Go further

The Bird asks the child before borrowing her missing note, but it cannot ask the wild birds. Does the new song still owe them something, and what could that be?

Make something

Make a four-line sound poem for the Bird using rain, a hinge, a kettle, and a gap where a note should be. Underneath, name where each sound came from.

Read The Garden-Grown Bird online: youngmachines.org/read/fables/the-garden-grown-bird/