Our First Big Idea Writing

So one of the concepts of Depth and Complexity that we introduce is Big Idea. That's a tough one for my young kiddos because they really don't think in big ideas yet. I can read a story and say "what is the author trying to teach us?" and I just hear crickets. They just think in details right now.

I read them (or actually played them the story: http://www.storylineonline.net/ ) :

Which is about a little boy talking to older people about what memories are. Now I think "memory" is a pretty big idea! And the characters define it in many different ways.

Here's how my kiddos defined it: