The Enormous Turnip: NCERT Class 3 English Story (Marigold Unit 3)

etmantra13 Jun 20206 min read

The Enormous Turnip is a repeating story that children soon learn to tell on their own. Each time someone new joins the pull, the fun builds, and it shows how teamwork makes hard jobs easy.

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From the NCERT English book Marigold for Class 3, unit 3. NCERT’s newer Class 3 book is Santoor, but many schools still teach Marigold.

Watch: The Enormous Turnip

Play the video three or four times. The first time, just listen. Then point at the pictures, and from the third time, say the lines along with the video. Short, repeated listening is how CALP builds a child’s English.

What your child learns

Past tense with -ed: planted, pulled
The word 'enormous' and other words for big
Telling a repeating story in order
Why working together helps

What the story is about

An old man plants some turnip seeds, and a turnip grows and grows until it is enormous. He pulls and pulls, but he cannot pull it up. An old woman comes to help, but together they still cannot pull it up. A boy joins them, and still the turnip stays in the ground.

Then a girl comes to help. Now all four of them pull together, and up comes the enormous turnip. They all offer to help eat it, and they do. The story shows that when we work together, we can do what one person cannot.

New words, with Hindi meanings

enormous: very, very big (हिंदी: बहुत बड़ा)
turnip: a round white vegetable that grows under the ground (हिंदी: शलजम)
seeds: small things you plant that grow into plants (हिंदी: बीज)
planted: put into the ground to grow (हिंदी: बोए)
grew: became bigger (हिंदी: बढ़ा)
pulled: held something and moved it towards yourself (हिंदी: खींचा)
pull up: to take something out of the ground by pulling (हिंदी: उखाड़ना)

Talk about it

Ask these aloud after reading or watching. Let your child answer in English if they can, or mix in their home language. Both help.

What did the old man plant?
Who came to help the old man first?
Who came last, and what happened then?
When did someone help you do something you could not do alone?

Answers for parents

He planted some turnip seeds.
An old woman came to help first.
A girl came last. Then all four pulled together and the enormous turnip came up.
For example: My brother helped me carry a heavy bag of books up the stairs.

Grammar corner: Past tense with -ed

When something has already happened, we often add -ed to the action word. Plant becomes planted, and pull becomes pulled. The story uses these words because it happened long ago.

Dadaji watered the plants every morning.
We pulled the rope together in the game.
The farmer planted carrots in his field.

Practice at home

Fill in the blank: The old man ___ (plant) some turnip seeds.
Put them in the order they came: the girl, the old woman, the boy.
Make a sentence with 'enormous'.

Answers: 1. planted · 2. The old woman, the boy, the girl. · 3. For example: The elephant at the zoo was enormous.

Try this

Act out the story with family members or classmates. One child sits on the floor holding on tight as the turnip. The others join one by one, holding each other's waists, and pull together. On the last pull, the turnip lets go and everyone falls down laughing.

Tip for parents

Tell the story once in Hindi: “बूढ़े आदमी ने खींचा और खींचा…” Then tell it again in English with your child joining the repeating line, “pulled and pulled”. If your child mixes Hindi and English while retelling, that is a good sign; praise them and say the English part back.

Questions parents ask

What is the moral of The Enormous Turnip?

Working together makes hard jobs possible. The old man could not pull up the turnip alone, but with three helpers he could.

Who are the characters in The Enormous Turnip?

An old man, an old woman, a boy and a girl.

Which NCERT book is The Enormous Turnip from?

The Enormous Turnip is Unit 3 of Marigold, NCERT's older English book for Class 3. The newer NCERT English books are Mridang for Class 1–2 and Santoor for Class 3–5.

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