If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Circle Stories

Laura Numeroff books helped us invent our own circle stories

This week I got out my collection of Laura Numeroff Books. They all start like this; “If you give a _____ a ______. I told the kids to be thinking of what animal they were going to use for the star of their story (subject). Then we brainstormed things you could give the star that would lead to their wanting something related.

 Then we did our own innovations or Circle Stories on the cute books by Laura Numeroff.  They copied the alliteration titles a bit by coming up with a similar pattern;”If you give a _____ a ______, both words starting with the same letter.  They turned out very cute!

This was another funny one…..If you Give a Bird a Banana…..these circle stories were darling!

This one definitely had some cute artwork here…..the story is down below…..

The kids followed the story frame and then I typed the rough drafts up after school.

If you give a Pig a Pancake and If you give a Moose a Muffin are two more of Laura Numeroff’s popular titles…..

We read a variety of the books and then I made up a sentence frame for them to try to write their own

circle stories. I encouraged them to add some adjectives or describing words to each page.

Here is the story frame we used.  They were supposed to try and add some really good adjectives, or describing words for each of the pages.

Then I typed up their stories for them using the page numbers to help them keep the story in order from beginning to end. And it helped them cut the pages apart to glue down on their paper.

Then they cut and glued the story pages on half sheets of white construction paper. Then they illustrated each page and added speech bubbles.  The last thing they did was add a title page with a dedication. They were really sweet dedications, many of them were to the moms.

If you give a Tiger some Toast…it was really cute with all the speech bubbles….

Then we made appointments and went to read our stories to all 3 of the other 2nd grade classrooms. Each child got to read to 3 or 4 other students in the other classes. So they reread their story at least 5 times.

They also read their finished stories to our class, in the author’s chair, after they had illustrated them.

 Then we put them all up on the bulletin board in the hallway. Everybody loves them! They are really cute!

The Laura Numeroff Books such as “If You Give a Pig a Party” are really cute springboards for writing your own circle stories. I was pleasantly surprised how well the kids’ creative writing turned out.

I think these stories should be published in the city library. They are fun and creative too!  Good job everyone! I loved reading your Circle Stories!