Mitten

I love Jan Brett and her amazing stories for children. With all the activities I could spend an entire week on one story. This week we are reading "The Mitten" The art work is incredible and the kids love to look at the pictures on the far left and right sides of the book that tell extra pieces of the story. Day one we read the story and talk about each animal. Day two we review the story and then act out the story. I set up a white sheet over a table or several chairs. This becomes our mitten. Then the children are given an animal to portray. As we retell the story (sequencing) the child crawls into the mitten when their animal is called. This is a very fun activity. Today I did this with a group of 3-4 year old and by the end they could tell me the exact order of animals and they provided details about the story that I had forgotten. Day 3 the kids color their own mitten and animals. Day 4 they lace their mittens together and place their animals inside the mitten. On the final day I used the rhyming pattern from Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, to create Red Mitten, Red Mitten. This is simply an added activity that works on colors. Make sure to check out Jan Brett's Website http://www.janbrett.com/index.html which has lots of printables. Also the mitten poem is linked here.   Mitten Link