The Mitten {Jan Brett}

Something I've been thinking about doing is using a great story and really building on it throughout the week.  I decided to try that this week with The Mitten by Jan Brett.

Using the mitten from Jan Brett's website, I adjusted the size to create a mitten that "stretches" as each new animal climbs inside.  Click on the animals below to print them from her website.  I made 2 sets of mittens to accommodate the different levels of learners.  The first set has a sentence structure already in place and the second set is blank for students to write in their own sentence.  Click the mitten for a free copy!

I did this as a whole group activity but it certainly would've been easier in small groups.  First, we numbered the mittens in hopes that it would aid in sequencing.  That worked for most kids.

Then they colored and cut out the animals to glue onto each mitten.

Then the students either filled in the animal names or wrote their own sentences to retell the story.  Some students wrote using ordinal numbers {The owl was fourth.} others wrote narrative sentences {The rabbit had big feet but he was cozy.} while others followed a pattern {The bear crawled in the mitten.  The mouse crawled in the mitten.}  I gave them various examples but let them decide what to write on their own.

To display them, I gave the kids 2 options.  Some were stapled together to create a flip book.

Others were strung on yarn and hung across the window.  {forgive the dark picture.  We get the afternoon sun and it was so bright!!}

For writing we used a cute adjective activity from {The First Grade Parade}.  Since I forgot to ask students to bring in mittens I just diecut white ones and let the kids decorate them.  Worked just as well! 

It appears I forgot to take a picture, but for math we graphed our favorite character and used a tally sheet from {Swamp Frog First Graders} to show another way to count and represent the data.

I had a great time using the book all week and I think my kids did, too.  We also talked about it as we learned about staying warm with penguins and polar bears.  Coming next!  ;)