You Can't Always Get What You Want!

Hey guys! We have a question for you. Have you ever made plans without even making sure it was possible for those plans to come true? We sure have. 

We recently read a story about this milkmaid. She was very poor, but she was also a hard worker. Since she was poor, she of course did not have the money for nice clothes. Since she did not have nice clothes, she felt she could not attract the attention of any of the young men in her village. 
Since she worked so hard, her boss decided to give her a pail of milk to sell at the market. So right away she left for the market. On the way, this girl thought about what she could do with the milk money, "I will buy myself a nice big hen. I will gather the eggs until I have a basket full and then sell them at the market. With that money I will buy a nice new gown for the ball. Then I shall attract all of the attention of the young men at that ball and they will all be fighting for a date with me." As that milkmaid was thinking of this, she twirled around as she imagined wearing her new gown. When she did this the pail of milk, which had been balanced so carefully on her head came crashing down and spilled all over the ground. The dirt then soaked up her dreams in an instant.    
The writer of The Milkmaid and Her Pail was Aesop. Aesop was an Ancient Greek story teller. Today, his works are called Aesop's Fables. His existence on this earth is an uncertainty because none of his written works survived. His fables were passed down by word of mouth through generations until someone decided to publish them. We are glad someone decided to publish them because of the good life lessons they tell.

The Milkmaid and Her Pail is a piece of traditional literature. It is a fable which means that there is a moral in the story. That moral is to teach generations and generations a very good lesson. Since the Milkmaid and Her Pail is a fable, it is also a prose narrative. There is only one motif in this fable. It is a journey. The milkmaid is taking a journey to the market to sell her milk. She is also on a journey to learn a very good life lesson. Can anyone guess what this lesson is? Well if you guessed, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch", you are correct. The Milkmaid and Her Pail has many elements of traditional literature. It has a plot that is very fast moving. The setting is vague; you know that she is walking on some type of road, but you do not know where and when. The theme of this piece would be the moral that you learn in the end. We hope you learned a little bit about the elements of traditional literature in this fable.

In our opinion, this fable would be a good lesson for children to learn. Children are now looking at toys that are coming out in the future and some expect to get the toy the moment it comes out. This fable will teach children that good things come to those who wait. We believe that this would be a good fable to introduce children to in the classroom because it is easy to read and understand. We can also have children write about a time they got their hopes up way ahead of something and then turned out disappointed in the end. 

Remember to never count your chickens before they hatch, or your dreams may go to waste. 

Here is a variation of the story about the milkmaid and her pail