Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Popcorn Piggies

Catherine had her first slumber party scheduled at a friend’s house when I asked her to pick a story topic.  Slumber parties make me think of popcorn.  I combined the two thoughts with some exaggeration and imagination to create this.  I have an air popcorn popper that I frequently let the kids use and it’s easy to imagine that going everywhere!

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Catherine.  She was six years old and loved adventure.  So, when she was invited to her first slumber party, she couldn’t wait.  She packed her bag and kissed her mommy and daddy goodbye and went to her friend Reagan’s house.  


When she arrived she couldn’t believe her eyes.  Reagan had made popcorn.  In fact, she had made a lot of popcorn. She made so much that she filled the whole basement up.  From the floor to the ceiling popcorn was everywhere.  Reagan explained that the popcorn popper got stuck on.  She looked worried, but Catherine giggled with excitement.  She grabbed her friend’s hand and dove right into the popcorn.  Fortunately she had had swimming lessons.  Soon the other girls arrived and they all swam through the popcorn laughing and eating as much as their tummies could hold.  Finally, the girls couldn’t eat anymore popcorn.  Reagan knew that her mom would not like popcorn all over the basement.  Her mom liked a clean house.  Reagan didn’t want to get in trouble so the girls knew they had to get rid of the popcorn.  Reagan grabbed a vacuum and tried vacuuming up the popcorn, but the vacuum couldn’t get rid of all the popcorn.  It was everywhere.  Mia and Liliana went to the garage and found some shovels.  The girls tried to scoop the popcorn out the door, but every time they scooped some out the door, more appeared.  Finally, Catherine had an idea.  She opened her bag and brought out her magic mouse.  He liked going places with Catherine.  When he saw the popcorn mess, he knew immediately what had to be done.  He pulled out his computer and immediately placed an order.  The UPS mouse arrived in 4 minutes with a  package marked Caution: Contents of this package are for professional use only.  When the mouse opened the box, he pulled out 3 small pig-shaped sponges.  He asked Reagan for a glass of water.  When he dropped the sponges in the water, they poofed up into gigantic snorting pigs.  They ate all of the popcorn in 2.2 seconds.  Before the enchanted pigs could start to eat the furniture, the mouse threw the water on them and they turned right back into the tiny sponges they were before.  Catherine, Reagan, Mia, and Liliana were relieved and had a great slumber party.  They lived happily ever after until Reagan’s mom put the pig sponges in the bath with her little sister.

Notes:  I almost always make Catherine bold and adventurous.  I don’t know if it helps her to imagine solving fantastical problems, but I like to think it does.  The magic mouse was a prior character for Catherine so was special to her.  It would be no problem to omit him and have a child pull out something like an iPhone and order the magic pigs herself.  She had been given some of those little toys that you throw into water and they expand into shapes so I used an exaggeration of that to create the “sponge” pigs.  When I initially told this story to Catherine, she simply used a magic spell to get rid of the pigs.  She doesn’t question those techniques or necessarily require foreshadowing the way a grown up would.  She just likes to be magic.                   

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