The Mitten

I love wintertime!  I am not sure if it goes back to when I was a child and would wake up eagerly checking the TV for school closings when the first snow fell but I think this carried over into adult life...especially since I now wake up eagerly checking the TV for school closings when the first snow falls!
The Mitten is one of my favorite winter books to teach. The kids love the different animals that climb inside the mitten. This is a good week to concentrate on text to text connections and story retelling. The Mitten is based on an Ukranian folktale. We read two versions of the tale. My favorite is the following by Jan Brett.

The students really enjoy this version because the author, Jan Brett, gives clues in the illustration as to what will happen next in the story. We "re-enacted" the story.  Jan Brett has a website with many supplemental activities to the book, which includes masks for this story. The kids really got into it!
We also read another version of the book.

 

We then made a poster outlining the differences and similarities of the two books.  the students did a fantastic job with this. We have been working really hard this year on making connections, whether it is through other books we have read(text-to-text) or something that has happened in our lives(text-to-self). This gives the students meaning in what they read.