If You Give A Mouse A Cookie tot bag

My new tot bag is based on the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff. Kaleb's favorite lovey is the mouse from these stories, he carries his mouse everywhere. It seemed only natural to make a tot bag for this book.

Here is a quick view of my tot bag.

First activity is a brown cookie that Kaleb will put magnet chocolate chips on. This can be used with a cookie sheet as the magnet board. He loves magnets so I had to include them. We will count the chips and later, you can use this as a math activity. I also made some felt cookies. There are chips on one side and the number on the other. I made ten cookies. Again, this can be used for math, counting, etc... I plan to first use them for a bean bag game - toss the cookies into the jar or can you find the cookies?

I added some straw activities. In the book, the mouse asks for a straw. Kaleb can thread the straws onto pipe cleaners as a fine motor activity or just drop them into the bottle. He likes these type of activities.

Kaleb loves playing with my mini dust pan and brush. In the book, the mouse cleans up, so why not have Kaleb work on cleaning up the pom poms? (think dust bunnies, ha ha) If Kaleb was a tad older, I would have also added napkin/wash cloth folding as well. Every day skills that he needs to learn.

I made cookie milk caps. These can be used a variety of ways - as counters, as a fine motor activity to drop into a milk jug, for math as I will use with J later this week. I enlarged a picture of the mouse and added it to a paper towel tube. I cut open the mouth and Kaleb will "feed" the mouse cookie beads. I was hoping that the milk caps would fit but I just couldn't get the mouth enlarged enough. I may try again. Please use discretion when handing a child small beads.

On hand, I had these cookie shape matchers that I found at a yard sale this past year and a circle sewing card for more fine motor practice. I am a firm believer of using materials that I have on hand for my tot bags. If I can make it, I will. I try not to buy items to create these. The sewing card could easily be made - a cookie to sew or a mouse.

This tot bag will be used this week for our book of the week activities. Here are some additional links for the book. I hope this encourages you to make your own tot bag to use with your kids. If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them. See this as well as other activities for the book in action - this week.

Links

Preschool Experiment the idea for feeding the mouse came from here. I didn't want to use food so I made the cookie milk caps.

Mom to 2 Posh Divas she did a unit for her girls on this book, she has some cute ideas for older kids which I will be using later this week.

Izzy, Mac, and Me also did a unit on this book with cute ideas. I love the tear and paste cookie.

Erica Bohrer's First Grade  has a cute graph/mouse to make. Have the family try out different cookies and see what they like the best.