Add Music to The Mitten!
We’re reading The Mitten by Jan Brett this week and I started doing something with my younger students that helped them remember the order of the animals, so I thought I’d share it with you!
A lot of my students have difficulty remembering details in stories. particularly if there is a sequence of items/animals/events. We started singing the following song to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell (<– link to the song if you’re not familiar with it).
“The mole went in the mitten,
The mole went in the mitten,
Hi-ho the dairy-o,
The mole went in the mitten!”
We replaced “mole” with each animal after it was introduced and it really helped them remember the sequence of the animals. Trust me when I say, I can’t sing and I pity anyone who walked by my office when we were doing it, but the kids remembered and that’s all that matters!! This definitely makes me want to add music to my sessions more in the future!
Happy reading!
What a fun and cute way to use this book! I work with lots of preschoolers and always stay away from this book. I might have to add it to the schedule next winter!
Thanks Melissa! The great thing is I used the same tune with older kids to work on past tense verbs and that has stuck too!