If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff
READ!
When a generous boy shares a cookie with a hungry mouse, it is the beginning of a chain of events that keeps the boy busy all day long and might keep him busy for days to come!
Watch and we’ll see what happens in this circular story!
EXPLORE!
Let’s Make a Mouse Puppet
Young children love to use puppets and story props to retell a story. These visual aids keep kids thinking about the story after reading and help increase motivation, oral language, and comprehension.
For If You Give a rMouse a Cookie, creating a mouse puppet is a fun way to give a voice to the mouse in the story! Find the pieces for your puppet inside the paper bag included in your backpack. Flip through the pictures in your book for examples!
After your child makes their puppet, get the conversation started by introducing yourself to their puppet and asking a few questions such as:
“Hi mouse! What’s your name?”
“Do you have a favorite cookie? Tell me about it!”
Looking at mouse’s drawing from the story, “Tell me about your mouse family!”
Remember that children learn best when they do and get to try things for themselves! Also let your child take the lead - they may arrange the dragon puppet pieces in different ways than you would, and that’s okay! If you need inspiration, look back through the book at the colors and styles of the dragons in the story! It’s more important that they have fun than for the project to be perfect.
the Big Five ideas for this book:
Talk: Talk with your child about visiting other people’s homes. Who do you like to visit? What do you enjoy doing when you visit those special friends and family? What are ways we can be a respectful guest? What are way we can be a kind host when people visit our home?
Play: Look back through the story at the different things the mouse was inspired to do (like sweep, trim his hair, take a name, etc.) Take turns acting out those parts of the story and see if the other person can guess what they are! The person guessing can look through the book for clues!
Sing: Hear two of our favorite children’s songs about cookies!
C is for Cookie by Cookie Monster
Who took the cookie from the cookie jar
Write: Invite your child to draw a chocolate chip cookie. Together, count the number of chocolate chips they included, then help your child write that number on their drawing!
real world connection
Home Made Cookies: Bake cookies with your child, inviting them to help gather, measure and stir ingredients, and place the dough on the baking sheet. Need a recipe?
Check out Mouse’s favorite cookie recipe here!
LEARN MORE!
Picture books, like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie are full of colorful illustrations that help children associate words and concepts with objects and events. These colorful illustrations are the first things that we learn to “read” as children since they show the action and offer clues about what’s happening in the story.
Open Ended Questions
Asking questions while we read sparks conversation and helps children understand what’s happening in a story. Open ended questions are questions that can be answered in different ways, leaving room for children to show us their thinking or what catches their attention. Open ended questions also help children become better readers because they prompt conversation.
Think of a volley ball game where the ball is hit back and forth across the net. That’s the kind of conversation that open ended questions can create! This kind of conversation is powerful for children because it gives them a chance to practice different ways to use words by listening, thinking and speaking.
Try asking these golden, open ended questions that work with any book:
What to you see? (Gives kids a chance to show us what grabs their attention)
What do you think will happen?
What made you think that?
Try these open-ended questions while reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Look - the mouse is wearing a tiny backpack! I wonder what he’s carrying in there?
I noticed that the mouse’s family lives in the woods (from what we can see in the drawing the mouse makes of his family), I wonder how he ended up at the boy’s house!
I noticed that the boy is cleaning up the mouse’s mess. What could the mouse do differently?
Look! The boy fell asleep in the rocking chair. I wonder why he is so tired?