Order the steps that Hedgehog and his friends used to combine ingredients, mix and bake the cake made in the story. Write the steps onto sentence strips or strips of construction paper and allow students to manipulate them into different orders to find which set makes the most sense in accordance with the story.
Retell the story in a role-play activity to enforce listening and reading comprehension skills with the elementary class. In small groups of three, students act as Hedgehog, Squirrel and Owl to act out the story in front of the class.
Use measuring cups and spoons to reiterate fraction use while baking a cake together as a class. Transferring the batter, made according to store-bought package directions, into cupcake liners alleviates the need for additional supplies such as forks and plates. Cool, decorate and share the cupcakes among the class. As a class, list kitchen safety rules and regulations such as keeping hands and faces from getting too close to a hot stove or oven and never open the oven without an adult.
Ask each student to bring her favorite cake recipe from home to compile into a "Cake Book" to be reproduced for others in the class. Each student illustrates a page with an image of his favorite cake and the recipe is then added to the illustration.
Students sculpt a cake with various colors of Play-Doh or use a common salt dough recipe, form it into a cake, allow it to dry for up to one week and paint it using nontoxic paint. The cake sculpture can replicate the cake from "Hedgehog Bakes a Cake" or may be an artistic adaptation.
Using an old unmatched sock from home, children create their own hedgehog to take home. Fill a seal-able plastic bag with one cup of rice, seal it and press it into the toe of the old sock. Twist a rubber band around it tightly to keep the bag from coming out and cut off the excess sock. Students can decorate the rice-filled sock ball as a hedgehog by gluing faux fur fabric onto the back and a small black craft pom for a nose. Markers may be used to add additional facial features.
In small student groups, instruct each to draw a food pyramid including the recommended servings of various categories of foods such as produce, proteins and oils. Students leaf through old cooking or home magazines and cut out and paste food images in each category. Compare and contrast a healthy diet with the cake prepared by Hedgehog and his friends.
Instruct students to create a hedgehog habitat diorama in small groups or individually. A hedgehog habitat in its native climate is comprised of tangled brush or can be underneath termite mounds. Students can replicate this nest in a shoe box by gathering grasses, weeds and dirt and arranging them into a home for the hedgehog, complete with a hole for him to enter and exit.