Flannel Friday! The Bossy Gallito/El Gallo de Bodas

You DO know Lucía M. González’s great retelling of the Cuban folktale The Bossy Gallito, no? You DON’T? Well then, go get it, now! I had the great fortune of hearing Ms. González herself tell the story at the recent REFORMA National Conference, and it reminded me how much I love the story and inspired me to create this flannelboard.

The Bossy Gallito is a classic cumulative tale involving a Gallo (Rooster) who’s going to the wedding of his Tío Perico, and so is all dressed up in his finest. When he sees some yummy corn, sitting in the dirt, on his path, he eats it, and dirties his beak. Well, he CAN’T go to the wedding looking like this! So he asks the grass (not very nicely) to clean his beak. Grass refuses, so the Gallo asks Goat to eat the grass since it won’t help him. This continues (Gallo asks stick to hit goat, fire to burn stick, and water to douse fire), until he FINALLY  politely asks Sun to dry up the water. Sun agrees, and so water, not wanting to be dried up, agrees to douse fire. Fire, not wanting to be doused, agrees to burn stick…and so on, until grass cleans Gallo’s beak and he is able to go to the wedding of his Tío Perico.

Here’s the Bossy Gallito in all his glory (sans paint accents, which I haven’t yet had time to add). I used this clipart pattern.

Note spiffy bow tie.

And in order of appearance. here’s the grass and the goat (from this clipart pattern):

The stick and the fire (both freehanded, obviously):

And, finally, the water and the sun (also freehanded):

Everybody’s got eyes and smiles as they’re all kind of anthropomorphized in the story. I also got ideas from Katie Cunningham’s Bilingual Children’s Programming blog – scroll down for pictures of her flannel pieces; they’re really cute!

Visit Rain Makes Applesauce later today for the full Flannel Friday roundup! ¡Diviértense!

Tags: Bilingual, Bossy Gallito, Cuba, flannelboards, Folktales, Lucia Gonzalez, Rooster, Spanish