This is a wonderful humorous tale, while cooking porridge with your child remember to say “Stop, little pot, stop!”
Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived alone with her mother in a small house near a big forest. They were poor and had nothing left to eat. One day the little girl went into the forest to look for berries. She met an old woman, who knew about her troubles, and gave her a little cooking pot. The old woman told the girl that it was a magic pot that would cook porridge whenever it heard the words ‘Cook, little pot, cook’. When there was enough porridge in the pot, the words ‘Stop, little pot, stop’ would make the pot stop cooking porridge.
The little girl took the magic pot home. She and her mother were no longer hungry because they ate porridge as often as they wished. One day the little girl went out for the day. When she had gone her mother decided she was hungry for a bowl of porridge. She said, ‘Cook, little pot, cook’ and the pot started to cook porridge. The pot filled with porridge and the woman wanted to stop it cooking any more, but she had forgotten the right words.
She said, ‘No more now little pot’ but it kept making porridge and spilled over the edge of the pot. She said, ‘That’s it, little pot, stop.’ But the porridge started to overflow from the pot and spilt down the table legs. ‘Stop it!’ she cried, but the porridge overflowed onto the floor and filled the kitchen. “Enough, enough!” the mother cried. It poured out into garden and down the street and into the next house. Then it poured through every street in the town and no one knew how to stop it. People came with buckets and pots to scoop up the porridge but as fast as they did, more porridge filled the streets.
At last the little girl came back into the village and shouted ‘Stop, little pot, stop!’ and the pot stopped cooking. But for a while, anyone who came into town had to eat their way there.