Bookish Play: The Mitten.

Bookish Play is play inspired by a book! It can help a child develop a deeper understanding of a story, teach how to recall a sequence of events or practice retelling a story, expand vocabulary; it’s also just a really great way to incorporate complementary activities and begin a mini-unit!

Last month, our Bookish Play was based on The Mitten by Jan Brett!

First we borrowed the book from the public library and read it once every day for a week. They really loved the story! Then one day, I presented these activities after they knew the story really well. I paired the book with small TOOB figurines that matched the animals from the book. A few weren’t exact… like I used a hamster for the mole and a raccoon for the badger. Although, I’ve since come across a badger at an independent toy store in Maine, so I will be ready for next year!

Then I paired the animals with a small white mitten, which is what the story is about. If you’ve never read The Mitten, it’s about a child who loses a mitten, and then animals of all sizes, come across it and climb inside to stay cozy. They had a lot of fun retelling the story and placing the animals inside the mitten in the same order as happens in the story.

Another fun addition is that I added white play dough (“snow”!) to make animal tracks with the figurines. This was Eva’s favorite part!

I found this rhyming work online and it paired perfectly! Lola was able to match up words like bear/chair, fox/box, mouse/house, etc. And each of the pictures had something to do with The Mitten.

I also printed outlines of mittens and had the girls do watercolor resist art! First they drew on the mittens with a white crayon, and then used watercolors over the crayon. This was a huge crowd pleaser.

I’m not sure which book we’ll do next, but the girls are very excited!