Playdough Strawberries in Action

One of the most beloved books around here is The Little Mouse, the Ripe Red Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood.  I do not even know how many times we have read this book, but we all practically have it memorized.  The book is a little bit different from most storybooks, because the reader is actually addressing the mouse.  I consider the book to be an excellent choice for reading aloud to a child, because then the child is hearing the 'conversation', and besides, it is such a silly, fun book!

To act out this story, we first whipped up some strawberry-scented playdough.  I added 2 packets of generic fruit-flavored drink mix to the playdough as we made it and also used several drops of red food coloring.

The final product was smooth and squishy- the perfect consistency.

I let the girls experience the dough with all their senses (except taste, and even then, one of them just may have nibbled it a bit), and then we were ready to read.  The purpose of the playdough was to serve as a prop to our story.

I started reading the story, and when I got to the part where the mouse picks a strawberry, we shaped the dough into berry shapes.

The little mouse tries to hide the strawberry so the big, hungry bear cannot get it.  We hid our strawberries too.

The little mouse tries to disguise the strawberry using funny glasses, so we disguised our strawberries.  Little did I know this would prove to be the favorite activity, which is why I only have pictures of this part.  The girls spent so long disguising their berries that I had plenty of time to snap some pics.

No berries here, just some goofy friends who came to call.

The little mouse cuts his strawberry in two and shares one-half.  We did the same.

Ultimately, the strawberry in the story gets eaten...well, we didn't eat our strawberries, BUT if I find a good, edible playdough recipe, we just might do it all again and gobble it up too!