The Mitten Activities

The mitten is a story that has been retold for generations. The most popular version of this story is written and illustrated by Jan Brett. This adorable story is about a little boy who drops his mitten in the snow. One by one a variety of animals decide to take cover from the cold air and cozy up in the mitten. As the mitten gets more and more crowded it stretches more and more until it pops! The children in my classroom love this story. I read it every January or February and do a variety of activities based on this story with my students.

My favorite version of this story is written by Jan Brett. I had someone knit me a giant mitten and I purchased stuffed animals to represent all of the animals that go into the mitten. The kids love sequencing the story and putting the animals in the mitten one at a time. Their favorite part of this activity is of course the giant sneeze at the end of the story. The love watching the animals fly out of the mitten!

Here is a mitten activity you can pick up from Amazon if you're not a knitter.

If you visit Jan Brett's official page, you will find a huge assortment of activities about The Mitten and all of her other books. She has sequencing pages, masks, and coloring pages. The pages provide a lot of opportunties for learning, and they're fun!

I always read at least one other version of the story to my students. They love hearing the same story with a different twist. I am able to see if students are comprehending the story and if they're able to compare and contrast informatoin. It's fun to make charts about which animals are the same in each story and which ones are different. How are the mittens the same and different? Are the main characters the same? These are all things that are discovered when comparing the different takes each author has on the story.

There Are Lots Of Them

Why not have a mitten theme? In my classroom I fill the bookshelf with books about mittens. My students live in the south and rarely see snow, therefore there isn't much need for mittens. I bring in mittens for them to look at adn read as much as I can. Before you know it they are asking you to re-read the books to them. I utilize the school and public library for these books while I build up my library.

If you have a Smartboard in your classroom you can easily create an activity about The Mitten. If you aren't feeling creative or don't have the time to create your own activity, don't worry, someone else has already created activities for you to use! Log into the Smart Exchange and search for activities about The Mitten. You will find math activities, science activities, and ELA activities all about Jan Brett's book.

These are some books I have in my classroom library that you might find useful.