Class 1 English Mridang Chapter 4, The Cap-seller and the Monkeys, retells the beloved folktale of the clever cap-seller who gets his caps back from imitating monkeys by throwing his own cap into the basket — alongside the poem Butterflies and the cat-and-mouse story Catch Me If You Can.
What Class 1 English Chapter 4 Covers
Story Summary — ‘The Cap-seller and the Monkeys’: A cap-seller carrying a basket of caps sleeps under a tree. Monkeys climb down and wear all his caps. Noticing that the monkeys copy his every action (shaking fists, scratching head), he takes off his own cap and throws it into the empty basket — and the monkeys throw all the caps back too!
Poem ‘Butterflies’ & Story ‘Catch Me If You Can’: Singing ‘Butterflies, butterflies, up, up, up’ to learn positional words (up, down, in, out) and reading how a smart little mouse escapes a sleepy cat.
Phonics, Insects & Number Words: Identifying insects (butterfly, honeybee, ant, dragonfly), matching word sounds, and helping the mouse through a maze.
Exercises in Chapter 4
- Let us Read & Speak (Pages 54–59): Retell how the cap-seller got his caps back and number the story events in order.
- Butterflies & Catch Me If You Can (Pages 60–74): Recite the butterfly rhyme, read the rebus picture story, and solve the mouse maze.
Read Class 1 English Chapter 4 Online
More Chapters
- Previous: Chapter 3: Picture Time
- Next: Chapter 5: A Farm
- All English chapters and the other Class 1 books: Class 1 NCERT books 2026-27
- All Class 1 to 12 NCERT Textbooks: NCERT Books PDF (Class 1–12)
FAQ
What idea did the cap-seller get to recover his caps from the monkeys?
Seeing that the monkeys copied everything he did, he took off his own cap and threw it into the basket. The monkeys copied him and threw all the caps into the basket.
Where did the cap-seller rest while selling caps?
He rested and fell asleep under a shady tree.