Little Hen’s Cafe – Tutorial

This morning Little Hen was up early, all excited about her idea – she was asking if she could create “a cafe with a menu and everything” for homeschool today.  We don’t eat out much, and I’m not sure of the source of her inspiration, but what a great idea!

She had very specific ideas about what she wanted – the cafe must 1)serve autumn food 2) have a tri-fold menu in fall colors and 3)offer appetizers, drinks, entrees and desserts and 4) she would be the waitress, I would be the customer, and Firecracker would be the chef.

Here’s how we made it:

Little Hen writing the title page.

and decorating with fall stamps

Then we made the inside pages.  Little Hen wrote the titles and asked me to write in the dishes (She is only 5, and gets tired writing so much, she explained).  She and Firecracker decided on what dishes the cafe would serve – all things they felt were reflective of the fall season. 

Don’t you love how she spells “entree” (at the top of the picture)?  So adorable.

Then we glued two pieces of construction paper together, glued a coordinating piece on top, and glued our three menu panels over it all:

After folding it into thirds, we spent the morning play Cafe – the girls took my order and served me playfood.  After I “ate” my entree, Firecracker said, “Now, who has room for dessert? We have a lovely selection.”  Too cute - she sounded just like a waitress!

7 thoughts on “Little Hen’s Cafe – Tutorial”

  1. Nicely done! I need to show this to my boys. They often make menus, but they don’t get fancy like this at all. They’d probably enjoy the inspiration.

  2. I want to come live at your house! And be five again. Hmmm, except while retaining an adult’s sense of how fun it is to be five again.

    Anyway, what I really wanted to comment was that I did pretty much this same project when I was in elementary school, for my AG (academically gifted) class. I suspect it would have been even more fun if I had spontaneously come up with the idea on my own, and also not been required to write a jingle and (the horror!) perform it in front of the class. Making up the restaurant was fun, though.

    I actually did kind of the same thing years later as an ESL teacher, having my students invent a themed resort hotel, but minus the jingle. We had just read a textbook chapter about an ice hotel, which is how this came up. I always tried to find ways use the textbook as little as possible.

  3. I love that. How fun! My oldest is 5 also, and loves writing lists and tickets and menus. I love seeing how they spell things logically!

  4. Thanks for visiting my blog. I love the look of yours- very clean lines and personal. I also like your use of pictures. I should probably incorporate more into my own blogging, but I also worry about it subtracting from the written content.

    As for the crafts, it is a very cute idea. I always appreciate when people try and get away from textbooks, because I always learned better without the textbook.

  5. That’s wonderful! My dd loves running a cafe from her kitchen, although she’s not writing yet (we’re following a Waldorf-inspired approach with her, although she can write her name).

    It looks really good – I like the flower decoration she has added to it 🙂

Comments are closed.