Mouse Count

Another of my favorites. This story has adorable illustrations and simple text for the preschooler/kindergarten child. Introduces simple math for nos. 1-10.

This was a favorite book when I taught preschool and today with my children. The dialogue is great for using fun voices for the snake and the mice and the repetition invites the children to read along.

This book is a really fun one to read aloud to my kindergarten class. It is not scary! They love it! And the fact that snakes eat mice is a basic fact that they understand. I especially like the moral of this story: Don't be greedy! When I read it, I always hear "Read it again, please". To make it even more fun, we get a plastic jar, a toy snake, a rock, and little toy mice to dramatize the story. They love to make the jar rock back and forth until the mice spill out and run away. This is a favorite centertime activity that the kids choose over and over again. It's a great prediction book with basic counting forward and backward concepts imbedded in it. You can't go wrong with this book for the PreK/K range.

I loved Mouse Paint and thought I would like this one as well. It's a good book and I don't regret buying it, but not as good as Mouse Paint. Throughout the book the snake is putting mice in a jar with the intention of eating them. Each time he finds some mice they're described as "little, warm and tasty." I leave this part out when I read it as I'm afraid it may be disturbing to my 14 month old as she starts to understand more.

This book uses a narrative format to introduce the numbers oneto ten, and then count back down again. A hungry snake finds tennapping mice and drops them one by one into a jar for safekeeping. "First I will count them and then I will eat them up," said the snake. "Mouse Count! One... two... three..." The mice wake up and convince the snake that he needs one more mouse, a very large one that they point out to him. While the snake goes to capture the other mouse (which is really a large gray rock), the mice tip the jar over. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." The mice uncounted themselves and ran home. The text is easy enough for a beginning reader, and the uncluttered illustrations make counting easy for beginners, too.