The Mitten Tree Story-related Literacy Pack for Preschoolers
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Mitten Tree Day is on December 6. It is a holiday traditionally created for grade school children, but I wanted to bring activities for preschoolers to enjoy it. Of course, the main reason is that I’m always on the hunt for new ideas and activities to spruce things around in the classroom or at home. You probably know that about me by now. I think this holiday is a great opportunity to introduce new activities based on a beautiful and heart-warming story, The Mitten Tree by Candance Christiansen.
This is the story of an elderly woman, Sarah, who watches children gathering at the bus stop. While they never seem to notice her, she notices them, especially one little boy who has no mittens, and decides to knit the boy a pair of cozy mittens and places them on the blue spruce tree for him to discover. The next day she watches the boy’s happiness when he discovers the mittens puts them on, and can play with the snow like the other kids. It soon becomes a game, with the children looking for new mittens on the mysterious tree every morning, and Sarah joyfully knitting new ones each night. When she runs out of yarn, somebody places a basket full of yarn on her door, so she can continue knitting.
I have created a FREE The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack with multiple activities to go along with this book that you can do with your preschoolers in the classroom or at home, which you can download at the end of this post.
Importance of Teaching Literacy
The development of literacy skills is the base for a child’s future language development and the ability to read, write, and overall learning. If a child cannot read, it will be impossible for him or her to learn important concepts such as Math and Science, and understand the world around him or her.
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack
The Mitten Tree Story-related Literacy Pack is great for strengthening the children’s language and helping them develop their letter recognition, pre-writing abilities, eye-hand coordination, one-to-one correspondence, pre-reading abilities, and fine motor skills.
I would like to give you some ideas of activities you can do, to take advantage of this wonderful book.
Use Pointers
Start by showing them the pictures in the book without reading. Use the opportunity to ask questions and let them comment about what they see. Then read the story.
When you read the book, use pointers to mark the words as you are reading. That is an easy and very efficient way to show preschoolers that you read from left to right and top to bottom and that words have meaning.
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack includes four pointers with story-related pictures, for you to use with this book. You just have to print them in white cardstock, laminate them, and glue them to a tongue depressor, for easier use.
Reading Aloud and Emergent Comprehension
Before reading review the parts of the book: cover, title, author, illustrator, spine, and back. Show them the cover and ask them what they see.
Ask you to read the story, and ask who, what, where, when, and why questions, such as:
- What is the name of the elderly lady?
- Where is she taking the mittens?
- Why do you think Sarah wants to knit mittens?
Also, ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions are the ones that can have multiple answers, such as questions about the student’s life experiences.
After reading ask questions about the story, such as:
- How do you think the child in the blue clothes felt when he found the mittens?
- Who do you think gave Sarah the basket with yarn?
- How will you feel if somebody gives you mittens?
Believe me when I tell you that this is a book you should add to your collection, but, if you do not have access to it, you can always use your computer or tablet to present the read-aloud video from YouTube.
Retelling the Story
Gather the children in a circle on the floor. Place a white tablecloth or a large piece of paper in the middle of the circle, and tell them that it represents the snow around the tree.
Bring a ball of white yarn to the center and explain that you are going to play a game. Tell them that you are going to start the story and pass the yarn to one of them. That child needs to say a bit more of the story and pass the yard to another child to continue.
After the story is finished, you can continue passing the ball of yarn asking them questions about it. You can continue for a little while, as long as they are interested. This game is excellent for focusing their attention on the different tasks and keeping them on track.
ABC Maze
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack includes this activity, and your preschoolers can use it to practice their letters in alphabetical order using a dot-to-dot marker to mark each letter of the alphabet in the correct order, to help the child get to the tree. Encourage them to say the names of the letters as they go.
If you want to use the activity multiple times, just print it out on white cardstock and laminate it, or place it inside a dry-erase pocket.
Alphabet Tracing Activity
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack includes one page with all capital mitten tracing letters and one page with lowercase letters. Print each page and invite the children to trace the letters and numbers using a pencil, crayon, or marker.
If you want to use the same pages multiple times, print them out using white cardstock and laminate them or place them in dry-erase pockets to make them last longer.
Alphabet Mittens
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack includes mittens with all the uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet. You can use these letters to extend the previous activity by:
- Teaching or reviewing letter sounds and names.
- Find other words that start with each of the letters.
- Match each letter with magnetic, foam, or wooden letters.
- Copy the letters and numbers with pencils, crayons, or markers.
- Place the letters in alphabetical order.
- Match uppercase and lowercase letters.
To get them ready, just print the pages in white cardstock and laminate them, for durability.
Pre-Writing Activities
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack includes four pages with the letters Mm for Mitten, Tt for Tree, Ss for Snow, and Cc for Child. You can also find in those pages each separate word and a simple phrase.
You can print the pages on regular paper and have them use a pencil, crayon, or marker to trace them, or you can print them out in white cardstock and laminate them, or place them in dry-erase pockets for durability and multiple uses, and have the children use dry-erase markers to trace the letters and words.
Write a Class Story to Make a Book
During circle time invite your children to create a story, reminding them that the story has to have a beginning, middle, and end. Use a chart paper to take dictation.
You can encourage them by starting with something like “On a cold winter day….”.
When the story is finished, print it out and have the students illustrate the story. Put it together as a book for the library, and make a copy for each of the authors.
Lacing Card
The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack includes a mitten lacing card. To get it ready just print it and glue it to a strong cardstock, laminate it, and cut it out. Use a hole puncher to punch circles around the mitten. Add a shoelace and invite your children to lace the shoelace around the mitten.
All these activities are great for strengthening the children’s language and helping them develop their letter recognition, pre-writing abilities, eye-hand coordination, one-to-one correspondence, pre-reading abilities, and fine motor skills.
Additional Activities
To make this story go even further, you can do other types of activities such as:
- Invite somebody who knits to do a demonstration for the children.
- Set up a plastic or real tree (even a branch will work), and ask the families to bring in mittens to donate.
- Make a tree out of poster board, place it on a wall, and have each child trace their hands on white construction paper to draw mittens, cut them out, and decorate the mittens, to be hung on the paper tree.
Include Other Books
Always fill your library, centers, and book basket with a great collection of other books, like the ones below. Most of these books can be found at your local library or used bookstore. You can also get them very easily through my Amazon affiliate links by clicking the images below or the link included in each book description.
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. This story beautifully depicts a child’s wonder at a new snowy world and the hope of capturing and keeping that wonder forever.
The Mitten by Jan Brett. This is one of my favorite books. The author takes the story from a Ukrainian tradition in a beautiful way, and it talks about a mitten lost in the snow by its owner, Nicki, and how multiple woodland animals find it and crawl in. As the story of the animals in the mitten unfolds, the reader can see Nicki’s snowy outing on the borders of each page.
The Snowy Nap by Jan Brett. A chill is in the air, and as Hedgie trundles around the farm all his friends tell him of the winter-time fun he will miss as he hibernates, so he decides to stay awake instead and ends up seeing the wonders of winter from inside Lisa’s cozy house.
Pin It For Later
If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable but want to save it for later, pin this to your Literacy board on Pinterest for later.
Then check out other story-related activities below, to add to your collection.
- Following Papa’s SONG Literacy Pack.
- Following Papa’s SONG Math Pack.
- Following Papa’s SONG Science Pack.
- The Kissing Hand Literacy Pack.
- The Kissing Hand Math Pack.
- The Kissing Hand Science Pack.
- The Mitten Tree Math Pack.
Don’t forget to download your FREE The Mitten Tree Literacy Pack. You just have to click the button below and enter your information, for an immediate download.
I hope you find these ideas helpful, and The Mitten Tree Day celebration is fun, happy, and full of learning.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.D. Please let me know if you like these activities worked for you, or if you think I need to add or replace something. My goal is to help you in any way I can and I don’t like anything better than to post something that you might find useful. Also, if you came up with different ideas to celebrate Mitten Tree Day and want to share them, I would love to post them as well.
