Sequencing & Retelling a Story Craft For "The Mitten"

1-2-3 Come Do A Mitten Activity With Me

Do you read the Ukrainian folktale The Mitten, by Jan Brett? It’s one of my favorite winter stories and perfect for practicing the sequencing and retelling a story standards.

With that in mind, I designed this quick, easy and fun, mitten-themed craft.

The Mitten story “slider” craftivity helps your students retell the story in the proper order.

I just updated this packet and have included a second slider option as well as some additional worksheets.

Simply choose which graphics you like best, then run the mitten and slider patterns off on white paper.

Using construction paper or card stock adds to the sturdiness.

Children trim their mitten, then color, cut and glue their slider together.

I pre-cut the mitten slits using an Exacto knife, so that children can easily insert their “storytelling strip”.

Takes me just a few minutes to slit a class set. (Try to say that tongue twister 3 times!)

As children pull on the end of their “slider” the various pictures go through the mitten “window”, so that students can take turns retelling the story to a partner, then take their mitten home to share with their family, once again practicing the lesson.

I introduce the lesson by reading the story, then share my sample with the children.

We retell the tale together, using the picture prompts on the slider. Pausing before I show the graphic, I ask children "what comes next?"

We've had a quick & fun review; my students now know what’s expected of them, and are excited to transition to making a “mitten story slider” of their own.

So that you can quickly and easily make an example to share, I’ve included full-color patterns for teachers, as well as a black & white templates for students.

The coloring, cutting and assembling a storytelling slider provides great fine motor practice, which will help strengthen children's finger muscles.

Sliders are an easy & interesting way to assess comprehension. I’ve also included a “Let’s sequence the story” activity for this, where students color and trim the "picture tiles" then glue them in the correct order on their worksheet.

There’s a larger, full-color option, so you can do this as a fun whole-group activity with little ones. This can be done during, or after you read the story.

There’s also a “Here’s What Happened…” writing prompt worksheet, as another way to check comprehension, plus practice sequential writing; hopefully using a variety of ordinal numbers and other transitions.

Use the colorful template to do this as a whole group activity with younger kiddos.

Keeping with a winter theme, today's featured FREEBIE is a sweet snowman "Name Stacker" craft.

I pre-cut the white circles for my kiddos.

Looking at their name tag, which is on their desk, they write a letter on each of the circles to spell their name.

Encourage students to make big letters, which fill up the center of the circle.

Afterwards, they glue on a hat and add some facial features to the "head"; then glue the rest of their "body" circles on, creating a vertical name "stacker" snowman.

Completed projects look adorable on lockers.