Mice are Nice

Learning with some four-legged furry friends

Mice are Nice 80~ Books to read:

Eeny Meeny Miney Mouse by G. Pascoe and S. Williams
Whose Mouse are You by Robert Kraus
Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells
Mice Squeak, We Speak by Arnold L. Shapiro and illustrated by Tomie DePaola
A Pinky is a Baby Mouse by Pam Munoz Ryan
Mouse Count by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh

Poems/Rhymes:

Hickory Dickory Dock

Quiet As A Mouse

Only one may talk at a time
So this is what I'll do
I'll listen quietly
As a little mouse
'Til all the rest are through
Sh! Sh! Sh!
Use the pattern from Eeny Meeny Miney Mouse and write your own version: Eeny meeny, miney mouse, Have you been creeping in my house? Eeny meeny miney med, have you been sleeping in my bed?

Focus on the rhyming in the story by reading it rhythmically:
Eeny meeny, miney mouse, Have you been creeping in my house? MOUSE, HOUSE (clap on rhyming words)

Focus on questions and question marks by having student write their own question for another person and send it to that person for an answer.

Make a mouse sack puppet.

Make mouse ears headband.

With Whose Mouse are You? have children use thumbprints to draw pix of each person in their family. Have them label with names or family words. Then take all the pix and place them in a graph to compare family size.

Make a survey form for the children to take home as homework Have the children ask five people if they like mice and return the homework to school. Then have each child color a graph to represent the results of their survey. Then make a class graph to show the class results of the survey. Arrange the symbols for the class graph in 5's or 10's for ease in counting.

Have students create their own mousetraps at home. My rules were: 1. Traps should be student's idea, but parents should help with cutting materials and building as necessary. 2. No real mousetraps or parts of mousetraps. 3. No real food in the traps. 4. NO REAL MICE!!!

Hold student mouse races. Provide children with a half of a walnut shell. Paint with silver or gray paint. Add tiny wiggly eyes and gray felt circles for details. Use a long flat surface that can be inclined. Place a marble under the walnut shell and race down the inclined plane. You could race two or three mice against each other, or use the activity to teach time duration.

To go with Noisy Nora have students write letters of advice to her about what she could do when she feels that she is not getting her share of the family's attention.

Make a "old radio style" portrayal of the story with different kids acting as narrator and character voices and sound effects on a cassette tape.

Read Mice Squeak, We Speak and write an extension with the animals of the children's choice. You could even introduce speech bubbles by providing some cut out to write what the animals are saying and the children can glue them into their illustration. These pages would make an excellent predictable book.

An extention activity for A Pinky is a Baby Mouse is to read the story discuss other baby animals. Have the students complete a mini research project by selecting an animal not in the book and have them look up the name of the baby animal at Enchanted Learning. There are fact pages to print with animal pictures to color. Give them a story frame to complete with the following sentence: A (blank) is a baby (blank). They fill in the blanks with their new information and illustrate. Have the children mount their page to construction paper and then color the fact sheet and mount on the opposite side. Laminate and bind into a class book.

After reading Mouse Count, provide the children with mouse manipulatives to group and count. Following the reading of Mouse Paint do a color mixing activity. My favorite is to prepare 2 ziploc bags of yellow jello, one bag of red jello and one bag of blue jello. Have the children predict what will happen when different colors of jellow are mixed. Mix colors by adding one half of the red jello into one of the yellow jello bags. Let the children manipulate and observe the change. Add one half of the blue jello to the other yellow bag. Manipulate and observe. Add the rest of the red to the blue. Manipulate and observe. The kids love this!

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie is another favorite mouse book. Read about how this book was quoted in a movie and print out fun coloring sheets to go with this story.

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