If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!

WEEK THREE of Fun Club brought us Laura Numeroff’s wonderfully fun books, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” and “If You Take a Mouse to School”.

Children love the cyclical nature of her books, along with the great illustrations and crazy animals…plus, the familiarity and repetition makes these great for emerging readers.

To activate our prior knowledge, we first used shapes to create our own little mice pictures. Children discuss what mice look like, how many ears and eyes and whiskers and whatnot…then they create on their own using the shapes provided. As you can see, they are far more creative when given the freedom to make it their own way within the given perimeters!

We also baked “Mouse’s Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies”. (For our diabetic and gluten-free students, we checked with parents first for the appropriate accommodations.) I love baking with the children because cooking is such a great lead-in to science, especially chemistry. They “taste test” most of the ingredients, smell the vanilla, help cream the butter, and sift the flour. They take turns and pass the bowls, usually doing “1-2-3-pass it on!” I use counting and simple questions to slip in extra Spanish and French…today it was “Que es el azucar?” and 1-20 en espanol. When all of the ingredients are mixed, the children roll their own cookies, getting SO messy in the process…but they are so excited to do it themselves, to get to experience what the dough feels like, to be the “chefs” (evidenced by the flour on our noses), and of course, to get to take home their cookies at the end of the day!

I’ve said it before…simple pleasures are so divine!

1 c. salted butter
3/4 c. brown sugar, packed (so cool to compare to sand at the beach / sandcastle making)
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs (important that they don’t eat raw dough because of this…also, what other animals lay eggs besides chickens? good discussion ensues.)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla (how can it smell so good but taste so bad?!)
1 1/2 c. flour
2 c. oatmeal
1 1/2 semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine all ingredients in given order. Mix thoroughly. Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cool. Hide from your mouse friends!