The Mitten

January 25, 2015

What a busy and fun week! We had a lot to fit in to our week in just 4 days. Not to mention that it was also the 100th Day of School for us this week too!
We had a blast with our Mitten Unit! This is such an adorable story and I really look forward to reading it each year! :)

Come take a peek at our week below!

Tuesday

We started the week by practicing some vertical addition on mittens. My students solved the addition equation and placed it on the correct sum. I had them glue the mitten only on the bottom so that it could flap down to see the sum.

We also practiced some positional words. I gave each student a mitten and said a positional word out loud. They used the mitten to act out the word.

We read the story, 'The Mitten' by Jan Brett. We focused on the title, author, characters, and setting today on our story map.

Then we worked on finding the characters and writing about the setting in our 'Mitten Story Elements Book'.

Wednesday

Today we had a lot of fun with this challenging activity! We sorted addition equations by whether the sum was true or false. This really got our brains thinking and gave us lots of laughs! My kiddos loved when the sum was false! I kept telling them that I must have been tired and wrote the wrong sum!

Then I had my students sort addition equations on their own and determine if the sum was true or false.

We worked more on positional words by reading a sentence that went along with our story, 'The Mitten'. My students acted out the positional word using a mitten on a string.

We reread the story, 'The Mitten' by Jan Brett and sequenced the order that the animals went into the mitten.

Then we sequenced the order the animals went into the mitten on our own in our 'Mitten Story Elements Books'.

We discussed the main idea of the story, 'The Mitten'.

We also wrote about the beginning, middle, and end of the story in our 'Mitten Story Elements Books'.

We made a class graph on whether we like gloves or mittens better.

We also recorded the data to go with the class graph on our own!

Thursday (100th Day of School)

We squeezed in a couple activities before the 100th day of school fun began!!

We learned about subtraction today!! This was so exciting!! We started with the basics of subtraction by acting out stories using the characters from the mitten. I had some of my students pretend to be the animals from the story, 'The Mitten' and we acted out subtraction stories.

Then it was time to get hands-on with some subtraction stories. We started with all of the animals in the snow (snowflake). Then I would say how many animals went into the mitten. After that we counted how many animals were left in the snow and wrote the answer.

After they practiced acting out those stories, we discussed what a 'minus' sign is, what it means, and what it looks like. We practiced some subtraction stories together and wrote a subtraction equation to go with it.

Then I had my students go to their seats and get hands-on with writing subtraction equations. I would say a subtraction story out loud while they acted it out with the animals. They also wrote a subtraction equation to go with the story. I was very impressed with how well they were picking up this new skill!

It was finally time for our 100th day of school celebration!!!! You can read all about it HERE!

Friday

We started the morning by sorting addition equations by whether the sum was true or false.

We got to knit our very own mitten today!! This was exciting and so much fun! I modeled how to knit the mitten and kind of just let them go on their own with it and a lot of my kiddos did better knitting than I did!!

Then we cut out pictures of the animals from the story, 'The Mitten'. We used the animal pictures and the mitten that we knitted to act out subtraction equations. They looked at the first number in the subtraction equation and placed that many animals in front of them. Then they looked at the second number in the subtraction equation and placed that many animals in the mitten. Last, they counted how many animals were left for their answer.

We also worked more on positional words in a mini reader. We read the sentence and determined the position of the mitten. I had my students highlight the correct positional word to make the sentence complete.

We finished the last page in our 'Mitten Story Elements Books' by writing about our favorite part of the story.

I read the story, 'The Mitten' by Alvin Tresselt. We really enjoyed reading this story and finding all of the similarities and differences of the two stories that we read. We did a mitten Venn diagram to compare the two stories.

I also had my students compare the two stories on their own.

We picked which animal was our favorite from either story. We sorted our favorite animals and turned it into a class graph.

I had my students write about which animal was their favorite and why that animal was their favorite. It is so exciting seeing them write and extend their sentences!