Writing inspired by Laura Numeroff

As a teacher, I loved working with Laura Numeroff’s books. The kids loved listening to her books and the antics of the different animals. My second year teaching I got a stuffed animal of her Mouse from the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books. Now that I have my own kids I was inspired to create a writing unit inspired by Laura Numeroff. It’s a great way to get a writing lesson in for your reluctant writer.

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Creating an ‘If You Give’ inspired writing prompt

I actually don’t have pictures of my kids working on this because I designed it to be completely independent work to do while I’m at Bible study and they are in childcare, so I’ll show you pictures of Superman’s work. The great thing about this project is you can easily adapt it to either early writing or still just drawing pictures student.

pictures of the pages for if you give writing prompts

There are four pages of writing prompts. First, they’ll pick one of her books and write/draw a review of the book. Next, they’ll brainstorm an animal and something their animal might do. The last two pages are planning out your steps, first the thing they’ll choose to do, and second how they think of it (describing words).

Superman’s version of the If You Give writing prompt

If you give a pig a party writing assignment fixed

First, he went through and wrote out what happened in the story he read, he chose If You Give a Pig a Party

, and got the highlights of the steps in the circle.

For those who are not familiar, the “If You Give books” are circle books. They end the same as they began.

if you give a mouse a cookie activity fxied

Next, they chose an animal and they were supposed to think of words that started with the same letter. You can see not all of Superman’s words start with the same letter, and that’s okay. The goal was to get him thinking.

Next, he took the storyboard sheet and planned the sequence of events for his story. He gave me a very long explanation, but I’m guessing his dog drove a car, rode a skateboard, and had a lot of fun.

brainstorm words to use in your if you give a story fixed

The final step was to brainstorm words to use in your story. Superman went through and chose some words that looked promising from the story he read, which wasn’t my intent, but it’s a good way for early writers to get some confidence and move forward in their writing, so I’m not going to complain at all.

This process gets your kids closer and closer to having a rough draft without it being a scary process. They all really enjoyed coming up with story ideas and gave me some great stories.

If you’d like to get the printable I made, click on the link:

If You Give a Writing Unit

I’m joining with several other great bloggers to share our takes on a different theme each month, check out how the other bloggers approached this theme and then create your own version:Enchanted Homeschooling Mom – Life with Moore Babies – Teach Beside Me – The Usual Mayhem – Growing Book by Book – Adventures in Mommydom – Afterschool for Smarty Pants

writing unit for the If You Give books by Laura Numeroff