Cookies!

A whole theme around cookies? You betcha!  The week before we do Christmas stories, we do cookies - because baking them is something almost everyone does around the holidays and it's still secular enough that my moms who are Jehovah's Witnesses can attend if they want.

Ginger Bear by Mini Grey. A story about a cookie that comes to life, but is lonely, so he makes other cookie friends!  Most of them come to their demise at the hands of a dog.  This is when I remind the children that they're what?  Cookies!  And what happens to cookies?  They get eaten!  None of them have been too traumatized yet.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff.  You *had* to see this one coming.  I mean, who hasn't used this in a story time before?

Then the Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins.  A great story about something everyone loves (ok - almost everyone.  I don't get you non-chocolate chip cookie lovers) and what happens when more and more guests show up and you have to share.

Who Ate All the Cookie Dough by Karen Beaumont.  Set up like a Brown Bear, Brown Bear book, this is a story of a mama kangaroo trying to figure out who ate all her cookie dough. 

The Duckling Gets a Cookie?! by Mo Willems.  Mo Willems is one of my favorite authors.  I LOVE doing the pigeon books because I can yell and stomp and act weird and the kids love it.



I have a fingerplay I do with this one and the kids just LOVE it.  Mad props to the librarian Christine over in Keystone Heights (I think) who showed this to me at a FLYP workshop forever ago.

5 Little Cookies

5 little cookies in a row (hold up 5 fingers)

"I'm going to eat you", I say, sooooo (point to yourself)

Grab a cookie (mime holding a cookie)

Grab a glass of milk (mime holding a glass of milk)

We're going to dunk our cookie 5 times

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (mime dunking)

and we're going to eat it in 5 bites

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (mime eating)

and we're going to wipe the crumbs away (wipe mouth)

How many do we have left?

4 little cookies in a row (hold up 4 fingers)

"I'm going to eat you", I say, sooooo (point to yourself)

Grab a cookie (mime holding a cookie)

Grab a glass of milk (mime holding a glass of milk)

We're going to dunk our cookie 4 times

1, 2, 3, 4 (mime dunking)

and we're going to eat it in 4 bites

1, 2, 3, 4 (mime eating)

and we're going to wipe the crumbs away (wipe mouth)

How many do we have left?

And so on.  I go faster on 3, slower on 2, and then make them do a super sky-high dunk into their milk on 1.  After, most of them want to drink their milk, so we do. :)