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If you give a mouse a cookie math game

The Virtual Book Club for Kids author this month is Laura Numeroff and we have chosen the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. This is a new to us author and one that T and I have enjoyed reading.

If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

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If you Give A Mouse A Cookie is a fun book that follows a lovely pattern throughout, with cute illustrations and lots of delicious cookies it’s perfect for sharing with toddlers and preschoolers.

As one of the things that we have been working on at home with T is numbers – she can count by rote to 20 but isn’t counting out things or connecting the numbers with quantity so using the book for inspiration I came up with a cute DIY math game for toddlers and preschoolers to help with counting and 1 to 1 correspondence.

Related Activity – Based on another Laura Numeroff Book If you Give a Moose a Muffin print and play the muffin addition game.

Grey Paper

Brown Card

Pink, Black and Brown Markers

Scissors

Sticky Tape

Dice

Making your Mouse and Cookies

If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

To make the mouse to give the cookies to for the math game you need to take the grey paper and draw around to make a circle – I used a large can. Once you have a circle cut this out and cut to the centre point from the outside and then wrap to make a cone that will fit over your fingers.

With the grey paper cut out two small semi circles for the ears with a flap that you can use to attach to the mouse’s head and then cut two small strips of the grey paper and scissor to form the whiskers.

Stick on the ears and the whiskers to the cone and draw in a pink nose and two eyes and you have a simple fingermouse that you can use in the game.

If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

For the cookies draw 6 rough circle shapes out on a piece of brown paper/card and then cut out. Add in some chocolate chips with the brown pen – if you want to play this game again and again it would be a good idea to laminate the cookies so that they don’t get bent easily.

After you have played the game why not make some easy rainbow cookies to share whilst you re-read the book.
If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

Roll the dice and count out the number dots on the dice – if you have a dice with numbers on instead of dots you could use this as an alternative for number recognition.

If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

Then once your child has the number of dots on the dice count out the number of cookies either giving the mouse each cookie in time or counting all of the cookies and giving them to the mouse all at once.

If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

I took this as an opportunity to introduce some language like “More”, “Less” talking about how many more cookies we needed or if T over counted how many less cookies we needed to match the numbers of dots.

If you give a mouse a cookie - Laura Numeroff inspired Math Game for Toddlers and Preschoolers

To re-enforce the counting I being the mouse counted out my cookies and checked that they matched the number of dots on the dice.

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

2 Comments

  1. Cerys this turned out to be such a sweet activity. I’m so glad your children were able to discover Laura Numeroff. Off to go make my cookies and mouse now for next week’s activity. Thank you so much for sharing and hosting the Virtual Book Club for Kids featuring Laura Numeroff Books

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