Friday is Basket Day!

Our cozy Friday has now been named Basket Day. It is fitting for us since I put all of the planned activities in a basket and pull them out on Friday morning.

I thought that someone might be interested in last weeks basket day study of Jan Brett's The Mitten. So here is what my basket contained...

Of course...the book! Which we read through several times that morning.

These cool print outs from Jan Brett's own website. 2 complete sets
*One pair of mittens on colored construction paper and set of animals to reenact the book.
*One pair of mittens used separately! The first I glued to a piece of construction paper for strength and covered with clear contact paper. Hole punched around the edge and Joshy "sewed it" with yarn to practice his lacing skills.
*The other half of the pair I just printed on plain paper and he decorated it as his art activity. I gave him scraps, markers, crayons, glue, scissors and yarn and he was able to do whatever he wanted.
*One more set of animals I colored and glued to cards. I also created 2 sets of labels (badger, rabbit, bear, hedgehog, etc...) and glued one set to the back. The other set he matched to the picture by using the beginning sound as a clue. He really liked this and it was great for him to have to figure out bear vs badger. (Sort of like Montessori 3 part cards!)

I also printed out a snowflake matching worksheet from half way down this page. I was shocked at how easy this was for him. He did the 1-10 match and counted those snowflakes right up and drew lines directly to the numbers.

The next activity we did was a sheet from http://www.enchantedlearning.com/. I chose the circle the starting sound of words from the mitten story page but it is members only. However there are several choices for non-members, so check here!

Our final work was matching Uppercase letters to Lowercase. I used these mitten letters but any would do!

All this work took about and hour and a half so we snuggles up on the couch and watched Little Bear Winter Tales a movie I have been saving for a "snowy day". All in all, we had a great morning. We both had fun and got to spend time being sweet and cozy but it was still active enough that he was kept involved. Which can be a feat with those active boys, ya know?!

Shannon