Good morning & Happy Tuesday!

Oh my goodness – I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS WEEK’S VIDEO!!!

I have love the story The Mitten by Jan Brett for ages.

I have used it in Drama Classes, at Birthday parties in preschool classes and at home with Piper.

It is such a fun story to read, dramatize and make activities around. And for years now (omg – where has the time gone??!!) I have wanted to write a song fro the book.

It’s not one where I put the authors exact words to music – but rather I have told the story (Jan Brett’s version of it) in a a rhyming way so that it goes along with the pictures. And, for course, I’ve added a chorus. 🙂

It starts of slow, as an introduction, and then gets a little bit more spirited.

So Click the photo below to see the video!

Remember – this will take you right to YouTube (to help me get my videos ranking higher and to keep me accessible to children everywhere!)

Under the video are links to other winter songs & videos and then scroll down for the full set of lyrics for the song.

And come on over to the blog for a couple of other fun ideas of how to have fun with this story!

Ready to have some more fun with this book? Oh my goodness – I have had so much fun dramatizing this story with kids in various ways. And it can be as basic or as in depth as you’d like!

I have a version for the classroom and a version for home. To keep it simple: All you really need is a white blanket (or sheet), children, and their imaginations!

So here’s the school version:

After reading through the story decide on which children are going to be which animals. Have more kids than animal characters? No worries – just make up more and more animals saving the bear and mouse for the end.

Then read the story aloud (you don’t need to cast a Baba and a Niki, but you can if you want), and as you speak of each animal, have that child move like that animal and then come and snuggle under the blanket.

When they’re all tucked in and the mouse comes in (perhaps just lays a finger on the bear’s nose 😉 ) get ready for the Sneeze!!

Tell all the children to do a slow motion burst out of the mitten and roll away. (SLOW MOTION is the key for controlling chaos – AND making it super funny, too!)

When the bear sneezes and as the kids jump and roll away, pull the blanket up and off all of them.

It’s an easy activity – but the kids LOVE IT. And if you want to make it more of a project, you can have fun creating animal ears/head bands for each child. Or making more of a “set’ for the story.

For home:

At my house, there’s just one child. So as much as we tried to act it out, it got a little boring and tiring! Lol! And then – we decided to grab the stuffed animals! Still using the blanket, we acted out the story using the stuffed animals. And if we didn’t have an exact animal match, we improvised. And then, of course, the AAAA-AAAA-AAAHHHCHOOOO is great fun pulling away the blanket and sailing those stuffed animals up into the air!

For a ton of additional activity and craft ideas for The Mitten, be sure to check Pinterest!

I so hope you enjoy this book and song as much as I do!! 🙂 Please feel free to share it around & use it in your home or school.

Wishing you a wonderful week & I’ll see you in your inbox next Tuesday!!

XOXO

Miss Nina

PS: Want more Winter fun? Check out last week’s post for the Snow-Key Pokey: https://mymissnina.com/the-snow-key-pokey-preschool-winter-fun/

 

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