January 1, 2012

Kindergarten Mitten Tradition

I LOVE the book The Mitten by Jan Brett. The illustrations are beautiful and the little peeks as to what's going to happen next really help us talk about foreshadowing. Every year, about this time, I read it to Kindergarteners.

Every year I do a different project based on The Mitten. This year we talked about WHY the boy's mitten got lost in snow. It was because it was white and fluffy and the snow is white and fluffy of course! So we made mittens that wouldn't and couldn't get lost in the snow. I traced their hand but BIG to create their mitten. Day one Kindergarteners used crayons to color their mitten. Day two we talked about texture words, soft, smooth, rough, bumpy. I had a few objects like fur and sandpaper that we used our words to describe. Next, they used objects at their tables to finish decorating their mittens. They are colorful, full of textures (that was our magic word of the day texture) and oh so much fun!

They could use as much texture "stuff"
as they wanted. But this student knows that art is in the editing.
Stunning! 

Happy Mitten!

Wow these mittens are happy!

Another happy kid and mitten.

Is that a happy face.
Ugh seeing a trend Kindergarten.



Clear off your drying rack.
These take AT LEAST a full day to dry.

Love that he used PINK!
Loved that no kids even batted an eyelash more!

Get ready for a MESS!
No one said Kindergarten was easy.

2 comments:

Phyl said...

Oh, I LOVE that book! Thanks for the lesson inspiration - you know I'm always at a loss w/kindergarten - I overthink it all, I think, and this is easy and terrific. Yeah Jan Brett!! Yeah Erica!!

Unknown said...

I'm with Phyl, Erica. I love easy peasy and fun kinder lessons as I find them a tough bunch of kidlets to work with. I love Jan Brett too and I think I could actually get my kids to create these. I also love the fact that you traced each kids hand instead of tracers(which by the way I am SO okay with)because they all look so unique!