Little Cree Books

The Little Cree Books below are the first in what we hope will become a large collection of online books designed for early Cree readers. Please check out the About the Project section of this website to learn more about how we hope to develop this collection. The books are currently only available in the Plains Cree dialect, but we hope to offer them in a variety of other dialects as soon as we can. We hope that educators and parents will make liberal use of these resources. Please display them on your classroom SMARTboards, print and/or photocopy them for your students/children, encourage children to read them online, or use them in other creative ways. We simply ask that users do not sell the books. Creative Commons copyright licensing CC BY-NC-SA applies to all of the books, unless otherwise noted. Click here for more information on Creative Commons licensing.

Kindergarten

maskosis okîsikâwmaskosis okîsikâm (Little Bear’s Day)

As Little Bear goes about his day, readers learn AI verbs that might apply to their own daily lives, and how to conjugate those verbs to describe others’ actions in the third person (singular)

Click on the image or the title of the book above to access a version that shows syllabics, Standard Roman Orthography (SRO), and English. Click here for a version that is in SRO only – no English or syllabics. Click here for a version that is in syllabics only – no English or SRO.

(Note: Some visitors have indicated that Little Bear’s Day is not opening on their computers. If this is the case, please email us to request a copy to be emailed to you, and if possible, indicate your computer’s brand and operating system, so that we can try to diagnose and fix the problem. Thank you!)

Grade 1

askiw meskocipayowinaaskiw meskocipayowina (The Seasons)

Kittens love to play! But they had better make sure they are dressed appropriately for the weather! In this book, readers are introduced to:

  • the names of four seasons
  • types of clothing
  • the plural immediate imperative for animate intransitive (AI) verbs)
  • first-person possession regarding relatives