Mittens and Hats!

This is the time of year that we read The Mitten. I love that folktale and of course, we read Jan Brett's version of this Ukrainian tale. My little ones got to sew their own mitten (I chose purple rather than the white that Baba uses in the story). Then they each colored and cut  all the animals found in the story.

We practiced retelling it to see who would be able to put all the animals in the correct order. Spoiler alert.... they all can do it! They love the story so much there is no question that the mole comes first, etc, etc. Some of them used the book to make sure they were correct.

Time to retell the story putting the animals inside their mitten:

I glue a note on the mitten for the parents to understand what we have been working on:

Next we read The Hat. Another great one... On Jan Brett's website she has puppets available for all the characters in The Hat. {Click Here}.

We compared and contrasted the two stories using a Double Bubble Map:

Usually when we make charts or do shared writing I share the pen with my little ones, but because we are new to the double bubble and the spaces were small I did the writing this time and I hate to admit it, but I also drew the sorry excuse you see for a mitten and a stocking. I purposely used blue and red for the things applying to one story and then purple (which is made by combining red and blue as we learned in science not to long ago) for the facts that are about both stories.

The first thing added to this chart was "Both stories have a hedgehog!" And funny enough, I was able to tell them that Jan Brett has a hedgehog for a pet! Imagine the looks on their faces. And if you are wondering, I learned that on her website.

Next week we will do a story analysis of The Hat.