Jan Brett

I love this week! Jan Brett is one of my favorite authors, so I love doing a whole theme surrounding her books, and introducing her to the kids! My youngest son groaned when I told him what we were learning about, but that's mainly because he didn't know who she was, or how fun her books were! There were no complaints during the week!

Dramatic Play

This was based on her books, The Three Snow Bears, and Annie and the Wild Animals. The "bear cave" had 3 polar bears inside, and blankets for their 3 beds. Outside, I had a bunch of stuffed and puppet wild animals from the other book.






Blocks

Giant mitten and mitten character puppets. We had done this story last year, although 2 of our students are new this year and hadn't done it, so instead of doing as a large group again, it was just out for free play. I ended up reading it 3-4 times as they had fun acting it out. It was on the shelf and played with several times during the theme week.


Noah's Ark book, and Noah's Ark toys and finger puppet set


Lincoln Logs

Art

Cardboard easels


Slime with markers. These kids do not like oozy yucky slime I've learned, but this recipe (white glue mixed with water with a little dissolved borax) leaves it thick and not sticky. I love leaving it white because then they can use the dried out marker box to color it. And they can still enjoy squeezing and stretching it without mess.


Beads and pipe cleaners


Watercolors

Small Manipulatives

Number pegs


Animal words puzzle


Mitten ABC clothesline


Lacing cards


Flat marbles with Jan Brett themed pages


Jan Brett number matching in pocket charts


Snack

Tortilla snowflakes with cinnamon

Bread and Honey, and we read the book Honey Honey Lion

Large Group

We learned the word "author" this week. I introduced Jan Brett as an author and illustrator and told them one thing that makes her books unique is her secret pictures on the sides of each page that show us what else is happening in the story. They loved looking for them as we read each book! We also learned that Jan Brett loves to travel the world and that's what inspires her stories. As we read each book, we marked it on our map where it was from.


Day 1, we read The Three Snow Bears. They quickly caught on that it's similar to Goldilocks and the Three Bears and just knew how it was going to end. We then used sorting bears and sorted them by big, medium, and small, then sorted by colors. Afterwards, they each took turns using the scale to weigh different quantities of bears and we learned words like heavier and lighter.

Day 2, we read The Turnip. I also showed them the Russian version I have of that book and we compared the two. I taught them a few Russian words too, and they loved trying to say Babushka! I lived in Russia many years ago, and showed them a lot of the fun things I'd brought home. They were way more interested than I expected them to be! They especially loved the stacking dolls. I have a 5-piece one that tells the story of The Turnip, but their favorite was my 10-piece one because the pieces get so tiny at the end.

Day 3, we read The Hat, which features Hedgie the hedgehog. My neighbor brought her pet hedgehog to our class, which was a big hit! He was very shy and preferred to stay curled up in a ball, but she was able to get him to at least poke out enough they got to see his cute face and feet. Some of the kids were willing to try to touch and hold him, while others were scared and stayed by me, preferring just to watch. Once we went outside to go home, the hedgehog was running all over the front yard, so the kids had a great time watching him move and run, and really getting to see his face!


Day 4, we read Daisy Comes Home. This book takes place in China, so I showed them some of the things I brought back from China, since I got to spend a semester there in college. Again, I was surprised how interested they were in just showing them stuff. They loved the lantern and paper dragon the most.

Small Group

My group did a puzzle page of The Mitten where they had to cut out the pieces, then glue them on a paper with pictures. The letters on the puzzle matched up with the beginning sound of the picture. It was good cutting practice and letter and sound recognition.

While my group worked, the other group got to play with the sorting bears and scales some more from large group.

The next week, my group read The Gingerbread Baby and played a Gingerbread Baby board game. We had also read The Umbrella, so the other group colored a rainforest mural, and rainforest animals they got to glue on to the mural. 


All of these games and extra themed things come from Jan Brett's website, which is full of fun lesson ideas for each book, games, coloring pages, etc.