The Mitten

I was able to get to our Mitten activities. Can someone please tell me where the month of January has gone? I don't know why, but I can't seem to fit everything is.

There are some more great mitten activities over at Storytime and More.

I based my mitten activities on the story "The Mitten," by Jan Brett. If you have never had a chance, you have to take at look at some of her books. I find all her stories marvelous with some of the most beautiful illustrations ever. I aslo read "The Mitten," by Alvin Tresselt, illustrated by Yaroslava. Mostly because the children love that this mitten "explodes" at the end of the book. I also like how the illustrations in the book slowly show the mitten ripping and getting holes in it as the animals push their way in. Both of these books are great stories and easy ones to have fun with.

I found a sheet with all the animals from Jan Brett's "Mitten" which I ran off and cut out the animals. The sheet was in "The Big Book of Monthly Ideas" from The Mailbox. I then gave each child a folded mitten that needed to be sewn together. Our mittens were a bit more colorful than the story's mitten. I had punched holes around the edge of the mitten and the children then had to sew them together. After the mittens were sewn I let the children decorate them with markers. The final step was to have the children put one of each animal inside their mitten.

At the end of the day we had a little "play". I had brought in two comforters to put together to use as our mitten. I then gave each child one of the animal cut outs and as we went through the story, the "animals" would climb into the mitten. At the end of the story, instead of just the bear giving a big sneeze, everyone sneezed and "popped" out of the mitten. It was great fun. The children loved this. I got, "this is cool Mrs. Nodolski," "let's do it again," "that was fun." We did it a couple of times and then it was time to go.