Cap Making ‘Business’ of the Mouse and the Beggar King

This famous tale from India is about a little mouse that was very smart and a king that acted like a beggar. It may be watched here (Marathi/English) even if you know the story 😉. The concept of money and addition/subtraction can be easily introduced in this story. In this story, the mouse finds a dirty cloth and visits different people (laundryman, tailor and granny) to finally make the cap. In the entire process of making this cap, the mouse is adding value to the dirty piece of cloth. In the modified version, the mouse may think about price that the piece of cloth/cap will fetch at each stage and thus children get to solve addition/subtraction problems that are embedded in the storyline. And finally, the mouse sells the cap to the King who initially acts like a beggar and steals mouse's cap!

Main Activity:

One of the child acts as the mouse (preferably!) and then the mouse visits the laundryman, tailor and granny, in that order. (The original story is given at the end of this post for your reference.) The mouse gets the things done by threatening them and not by paying any money.

• After visiting the laundryman, the mouse thinks that this bright and clean cloth will get 5 gold coins (that is the currency of this kingdom 😀) 

• After the tailor makes the cap, the mouse thinks that this bright red cap will get 15 gold coins in the market.

Question to ask: What is the additional amount that the mouse will get by making the cap from ‘cleaned’ cloth (vs just the cleaned cloth)?

• After visiting granny, that the mouse knows that the decorated cap will give him 22 gold coins.

Question to ask: What is the extra amount that the mouse will get by decorating the cap?

Lastly, rather than running away from the King’s court, the mouse sells cap to the King and makes the profit of 22 gold coins 😀

 

Variations:

For younger kids, the story can be altered to include addition rather than subtraction.

For the older kids, there is a possibility of the second round, where the mouse buys additional pieces of cloth and sells the caps. Here, after observing the mouse's business in the first round, everyone charges for their services. And so, the income per cap for the mouse is now less. In this version, the concepts of value addition, and profit may also be introduced.

  

Original Story:

The story goes like this: One day the mouse sees a dirty piece of cloth and decides to make a cap out of it. So, it first cleans it from the laundry cleaner, then gets it stitched from the tailor and then finally gets it decorated from the granny. All of them initially refuse and after the mouse gives the threat that it will call the King’s soldiers, they oblige. Now, the mouse with its new cap goes to the King’s court and shows off its cap while making fun of the King. The King gets angry. He orders the soldiers to capture the mouse and take away the cap. The mouse shouts, “King is a beggar, he took away my cap!” And so the frightened King gives back the cap. So, in the end the mouse runs away shouting, “King is afraid of me, he gave back my cap!”