Winter Writing Activity: "The Mitten" (FREEBIE!)

Now this might sound like a complaint, but it certainly is not!  I absolutely LOVE my school's year-round schedule.  As a matter of fact, I have been on winter break since December 2nd and we do not return until January 3rd (I know...we are lucky).  However, we hardly have time to do Christmas projects and other fun activities.  So anyway, I focus less on Christmas and more on winter in general when we return in January.

Here is an activity I use with my Kindergarten students:

1 - I read aloud The Mitten by Jan Brett.  (Believe it or not, I picked my copy up last year at Sam's Club for a lesser price than, say, Barnes and Noble.)

2 - The students retold the story.  We used a bed sheet as "the mitten."  Last year, I draped it over some student desks.  This year, I had some student volunteers just hold the sheet.  I gave more student volunteers masks and they became the animals in the story.  You can find these animals masks by clicking HERE!  I suggest saving them to your flashdrive or computer, just in case you lose track of the website in the future.  (By the way...if you have not yet visited Jan Brett's website, spend the time doing so!  She has SO many activities and printables that she shares with us for FREE!  Check this page out - Jan Brett's Activity Page)

Here is an example of one of the masks.  I printed mine on the color printer at school, glued them on cardstock, cut them out, laminated them, and then attached them to these big, wooden paint sticks I had in my classroom.

3 - The students imagined that they were the child in the story.  I told them to be as creative and silly as they wanted.  We brainstormed things that might fit in our mitten and then we wrote our ideas on chart paper.

4 - The students completed an independent writing activity.  You can get this for FREE by visiting my TPT Store.  Just click HERE!  Students fill in the boxes with high-frequency words.  My students decided they could write one of these words in the first box:  "My, The, This" and one of these words in the second box:  "the, a, my, this."  Then, they colored pictures inside of the mitten to match their sentence.

5 - I created a cover and put the pages together to create a classroom book.  My goal is to put a new classroom book out on display in the hallway at least once a month.  So far, I have been successful this year!

Well, that's it!  I hope you are able to use these ideas in your classroom.  My students LOVE acting out the story and crawling into "the mitten."  I bet your kids will have fun, too!  Thanks for stopping by.  :)