Reading Circular Stories with Kindergarten

We are nearing the end of my second year leading kindergarten media classes and I'm getting a little nostalgic already! The past couple of weeks, we've been reading and talking about circular stories; stories that end in a way that starts the story all over again.

The pictures above are from Gemma Merino's book, The Crocodile Who Didn't Like Water. In the first picture (inside the front flap of book), we see an adult crocodile carrying a basket of crocodile eggs...except one is white. Hmmm...that white egg ends up being the crocodile who didn't like water. And he doesn't like water because he's not a crocodile; he's a dragon! Then the picture at the end of the book is that grown up dragon carrying a basket of white dragon eggs. Except one is blue. And here we go again.

Does it bother you that crocodile eggs should be white, not blue? Well, I can tell you that it does bother kindergarten students. Gotta love critical thinkers!

Our next example of a circular story was David LaRochelle's It's a Tiger! Look at the first picture, top of the righthand page...see the tiger's tail? Throughout the book, the main character tries to get away from this tiger. But every time it seems safe, we can see a bit of that tiger peeking out on the page. In the end, when we realize that the tiger is sleepy, the main character suggests that we read a story to put it to sleep. The story starts just as it did in the beginning of the book only now look at the top of the righthand page...it's a crocodile!

Now, this isn't a book. This is my deck railing but we have a circular story here too. My parents were over a few nights ago and we were sitting outside chatting. My mom had her back to this railing and as I sat talking to her, I noticed this inch worm...well, inching along this post cap. About five minutes later, I noticed another one doing the same thing and I mentioned it aloud. Yeah, you've probably figured this out already. But I hadn't until I saw the third one inching along. Or wait...oh, it was the same one coming around for the third time.