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*Safety Check-In: The activities in this curriculum are intended for family-style use under direct adult supervision. Because every family’s home environment and children are unique, please use your best judgment to ensure a safe experience. Always verify materials—such as plants, food items, or chemicals—for safety and allergies before use, and keep heat sources, tools, and small parts under close adult watch. You know your children best; please adapt these activities as needed to ensure they are age-appropriate and safe for your specific family.
Lesson Plans Coming Soon!
Materials
Book Activity:
- The Mitten Book by Jan Brett
- Construction Paper (in the color you want your mitten)
- Lamination Sheets – 2 *optional
- Milk
- Food coloring
- Q-tip
- Soap
- Yarn
- Tape
- Hole Punch
- Animal Crackers
- Animal Pictures and Words (found here)
- Real Mitten
Math Activities:
- Counting cubes or ruler
- Two mittens of each color cut from construction paper
- Marker
- Clothes Pins
- Yarn
How To
Book Activity:
Start by cutting out this mitten template on two pieces of construction paper.
Fill a bowl with milk. Add food coloring to the top of the milk. Dip a q-tip in soap, then dip it into the food coloring. Watch the colors disperse quickly. Dip your mitten into the milk mixture to create a marbled effect.
Laminate the mittens once dried if wanted. Punch holes along the outside edge of the mitten to “sew”. Tape the end of a string to make it sturdy, tie a thick knot to one end, and lace your mitten.
Read the book and add these animal cards in one at a time on each page the animal is mentioned. At the end of the book, throw your mitten in the air and shake out all the animals.
Enjoy animal crackers in a real mitten. Watch the mitten stretch and grow with each animal that is added until it is full.
Math Actvities:
Cut two smaller mitten shapes from each color of construction paper. Add designs across colors if wanting to make it more challenging. On the backs, write numbers 0-20.
Use counting cubes or a ruler to measure the height of your mitten. Fill out the accompanying math paper here.
String yarn across chairs or the back of a door. Practice matching the mittens by color or pattern, using fine-motor skills to pinch the clothespins and pin the matching mittens to the yarn line.
Flip the mittens over and use the number side to measure yourself in mittens! Lay down, stack the mittens while you count, and take a picture to show your child how tall they are getting.
Learning Across Ages
Toddlers & Preschoolers: The marbling of the mitten is a science experience that young learners can use to get familiar with the curious nature of science. The math activities can be used in so many math-friendly ways to learn numbers, counting, one-to-one sequencing, and measuring. Help these children write their math paper to see how spoken language translates into written word form. The story, animal crackers, and picture printouts lend themselves to learning early story sequencing.
Elementary: The marbling art activity helps learners understand about surface tension and early ideas about how bonds come together and break apart.
The measuring of the mitten with counting blocks or the ruler can be made into a lesson about multiplication when combined with how many mittens. If one mitten is 6 inches and you have 4 mittens, that is 24 inches worth of mitten to fit the animals in.
The story is a perfect example of foreshadowing through the side window pictures found on each page of the book. This is also an excellent way to understand sequencing if they can remember the order the animals went into the mitten.
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