It’s the third week of my series #mtnwildstorytime! This weekend for our storytime, we chose The Mitten by Jan Brett. This is a classic story that we bring out every Winter. My son is obsessed with all things animals so this book is one of his favorites! The book is about a young boy who asks his Grandmother to knit him white mittens and loses one in the snow. One by one, woodland animals squeeze their way into the cozy mitten and what happens at the end of the book always makes for a good giggle !
I asked my very talented mother-in-law to paint some story stones for this book and I just love how they turned out! She paints all kinds of rocks for different holidays, seasons, movies, book characters etc. We have a special drawer for all the beautiful rocks she makes Liam and we have used them as decor, for memory games, and as story stones. (She will be opening an Etsy shop soon!)
You can paint these rocks yourself (Pinterest is a great resource for inspiration) or have your child paint the rocks. They do need to sit and dry for several hours so make sure you paint the rocks a day or more before you plan to sit down and start your storytime activity.
As always, I had all the supplies laid out and ready before calling my kiddo over to start storytime. He was SO excited to see this book on the table! I wanted to spend a bit more time this weekend during stortime so I decided that I would have two activities planned. The first was for my son to sew a little white mitten.
I drew out the shape of a mitten on a piece of white felt and then cut the shape out. You will need two pieces of felt to sew together so cut a second mitten shape out. I pinned the two pieces of felt together to help them stay in place.
I thread the needle for him and showed him how to make a couple of simple stitches. This was his first time sewing and he took to it faster than I thought he would! He sewed the entire mitten by himself and really focused and took his time on it. He was so proud of his finished creation!
After he completed the mitten, we took a quick lunch break and he requested “mitten food” so I used a mitten cookie cutter to cut out a sandwich for him. It always amuses me how the smallest of things can bring him such joy. He was just the happiest little boy eating that mitten-shaped sandwich and beaming at his felt mitten he sewed.
As I read book aloud, my son took the appropriate animal stone and placed it in the mitten. He acted the whole book out with the stones and when the bear sneezes a giant ACHOOOO! and the mitten goes flying, he tossed the stones everywhere and was belly laughing.
This activity can be altered for younger children, too! If you child is too young to sew (my son is 7) you can also have the child glue two pieces of felt together or even just draw a shape of a mitten on paper and have your child cut it out. Then they can lay the rocks on the paper like they are crawling into the warm white mitten in the book.
After reading the book aloud, I had my son dump all the story stones out of the mitten and asked him to put them back in the mitten in order as the book. He had to look at the book a couple times to see what animal came next, and it was a perfect time to talk about sequencing in books. What comes next? Can you memorize what order the animals squeeze into the mitten? What is your favorite animal in the book?… These are all great questions to ask your child!
To follow our weekly storytime, you can follow me on Instagram and follow the hashtag #mtnwildstortime ! I would love to see how you storytime with your kids! Please share and tag me @mymountainwild
You can read last week’s storytime post with Over And Under The Snow here.
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