Reader's Workshop and "The Mitten"

Jan Brett is the author and illustrator of "The Mitten" (retelling) of this Ukrainian folktale. It is one of our favorite books to share with the class after the long winter break.  The weather was so cold our first week back that the book "The Mitten" was a perfect fit for Reader's Workshop. The story is about a boy named Nicki who wanted snow white mittens. His grandmother did not think it was a good idea because if he lost them in the snow they would be too hard to find. She gave into his request and as the story goes he lost one of them. It was eventually found by a stream of woodland animals that made the mitten their home. One by one the animals moved into the mitten to keep warm. When a bear lumbered by and snuggled into the mitten it held fast until a field mouse tickled his nose and made him sneeze. The animals went flying along with the mitten which flew back into Nicki's arms. 
The following are some of the fun activities that we did with "The Mitten."

Reading our sentence strips and learning sight and color words.

Students decorated their own mitten book with all of the colors in the above chart. This book is now in their book bin as another book to read.

After rereading the book, students were invited to sequence the animal's arrival in the mitten, how they got there, and why the other animals make room for them.

Students drew, cut out and glued their own mitten onto a paper bag. The cards are for them to sequence their own retelling of the story and place them in the bag.

Finally, in Reader's Theater, children had lots of fun retelling the story they now know so well.