We’re Making Breakfast for Mother: Picture Book Extensions

We're Making Breakfast for Mother. Neitzel, Shirley. Illustrated by Nancy Winslow Parker. Greenwillow Books, 1997.

Annotation:

A father and two children are making breakfast in bed for their mother. The cumulative text names all the items that they place on the breakfast tray (flowers, cereal, sugar, toast, tea, banana and milk). The repetitive phrases also include some rebus pictures to help tell the story. The children deliver the breakfast they have created with some mishaps. For example, the toast is burnt, the tea is cool, and several things have spilled. Mother is grateful for the breakfast and then suggests taking a walk so she can avoid seeing the mess in the kitchen. The last page shows the family eating breakfast at a diner.

The simple, colorful illustrations are made with watercolors and colored markers. They match the storyline well and help the reader understand what is happening on each page. The rebus pictures help the reader remember the order of the items on the breakfast tray. I think that preschool through young school age children would enjoy this story.

Extensions:

• Drama
  
  • I would provide a collection of play food, dishes and trays. The children could use these items or the storytelling props to retell the story from the book. They could also use the play items to create their own tray of food that they would like to be served or to serve to someone else. They could also act out serving the food to each other. Older children could make a menu of what they will be serving.
    
• Art
  
  • I would provide paper, crayons, markers, and colored pencils. The children could draw a picture of their favorite breakfast foods. They could then share these with the group by showing their picture and naming the foods that they drew. You could also provide plastic vases and artificial flowers for the children to create their own bouquets. The children could also draw pictures of these bouquets.
    
• Math
  
  • You could provide each child with two or three different shaped cereals (circle, square, and flake). After a short discussion about patterns and doing some examples together, the children could make patterns with their pile of cereal. You could also make a graph showing each child's favorite kind of cereal or breakfast food.