Happy Holidays with Jan Brett

I love to do a Jan Brett author study in December. Her books are so much fun and the illustrations are beautiful. We get into the spirit of winter with stories such as The Gingerbread Baby, The Mitten, The Hat, The First Dog, and The Trouble with Trolls. Our school is culturally diverse and this theme is fun without focusing on any one culture.

This year our class is participating in the Jan Brett online project created by Mrs. Holloway and Mrs. Hartley. We are looking forward to participating in this project with classes from Washington, Florida, Canada, New York, Illinois, Kentucky, California, and Ohio. I am glad of the opportunity to incorporate technology into our curriculum. Each class has three options for using technology as part of the project.

First, we read several Jan Brett stories and then decided our favorite using tally marks to record our choices. As part of the project we voted for our favorite Jan Brett story character and wrote a class review of the book.

 

Our Class Review of The Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett

The main character is the gingerbread baby. Some other characters were the cat, fox and Mattie.

In the beginning Mattie and his mom make the gingerbread baby and he pops out of the oven and runs away.He jumps over the fence and he meets the dog, cat, horse and others.

At the end Mattie makes him a little house. The gingerbread baby lives in the house and dances.

We like this story because....

"It had a baby and I like babies. They're cute."
"I like when the gingerbread baby dances."
"I liked when the gingerbread baby was in his house."
"I liked the gingerbread baby running away."
"I liked it because he doesn't get eaten."
"My favorite part is the gingerbread baby's belt."
"I liked it because he has a home."

Click here to visit the project and discover what the other classes have to say about Jan Brett.

"Moo! You smell good!"

Some Activities to Use During a Jan Brett Author Study

  1. After reading The Mitten follow up with another mitten classic by reading, singing and acting out The Three Little Kittens.
  2. Play "Who's Got the Mitten". The children sit in a circle and close their eyes and take turns hiding a mitten by sitting on it and then guessing who has the mitten.
  3. Print out the masks from Jan Brett's site to role play her story The Hat.
  4. Compare and contrast the two stories The Mitten and The Hat.
  5. Make copies of mittens, hats and/or gingerbread men and program with numbers from 1-20 to practice sequencing or addition and subtraction.Use the mittens and hats as non-standard forms of measurement to measure around the classroom. (Have the students use their own mittens and gloves also.) This is a great activity to reinforce cooperation since the students have to work in groups to put their mittens/hats together to be able to measure a table length. Another math activity using the same mittens and hats is to make them in different colors and designs and use them to match or create patterns.
  6. Make a large gingerbread man and cut a hole in the middle for his tummy. Staple together two paper plates. Cut a large hole in the middle of the top plate.Staple the gingerbread man to the two paper plates so that the holes line up. Make a set of teen numbers (or letters) and feed your class gingerbread man numbers or letters that the kids know.
  7. Make a chart of the different types of animals that are characters in Jan Brett books. Categorize the animals into types such as farm, pets, wild or forest, zoo,etc.
  8. Read The Trouble with Trolls and follow it up with another classic The Three Billy Goats Gruff which also has a troll.
  9. Read "The Stinky Cheese Man". This story can be found in the book Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith . This story really makes them laugh. Brainstorm a list of other types of "foodman". Have students illustrate their suggestions and make into a classbook. The Twizzlerman, the cottagecheeseman and the spinachman are some examples my class has come up with.
  10. Use teddybear counters to estimate how many bears will fit in a mitten. Use a mitten from the lost and found so you can really pack those counters in and not worry about stretching the mitten.
  11. Jan Brett's site has a wonderful reproducible of the animals from the story and a mitten to assemble. The students can use this to retell the story.Check this out at http://www.janbrett.com/.
  12. For more language arts activities visit Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site .
  13. Cut out a mitten outline from a folder. Inside the folder place pieces of construction paper in the color sequence of the song/poem below. As you sing the poem remove the top piece of construction paper to reveal the next color of mitten. See photo. This works as a pocket chart activity as well.
  14. Make a glyph with a gingerbread man pattern/reproducible. The students color the gingerbread man according to your directions. This is a good listening and following directions activity. These are the directions I use. If you are a boy color my eyes blue; but if you are a girl color my eyes purple. If you walk to school give me an orange triangle nose; but if you ride in a car or bus give me a red circle for a nose. If you have a pet color my buttons blue; but if you don't have any pets color my buttons green. If you like vanilla ice cream color my icing orange; but if you like chocolate ice cream color my icing red.
  15. Use the same gingerbread man pattern/reproducible for another math activity. The students measure the area and circumference of their gingerbread man using counters. Depending on the type of class you have you may want to substitute or introduce this activity by having the students measure around you, the teacher with their mittens. Compare this measurement to how many mittens it takes to measure the circumference of a student.
  16. One of the special things about Jan Brett books are her beautiful illustrations. Around each picture on the page she creates a border. In this border are more illustrations that are peeks at what the other characters are doing. By looking at the border the children may be able to predict what is going to happen next. In the story The Mitten you can see in the border that as Nicki walks along he disturbs the animals from their burrows. The animals come out from their homes and thus see the mitten and the main plot action continues. Focusing on the illustrations in theborder is a good way to discuss using picture clues and making predictions.
  17. After reading The Gingerbread Baby and the traditional classic The Gingerbread Man I like to introduce the -an family. We do many word family activities. One new one I did this year that the children enjoyed was writing the -an on an index card and calling it the caboose. Then I had various letters on index cards that we called the engine. The children pretended to be train cars and hooked up the caboose to the engine while making the appropriate train noises. This really helped them to understand word families. Then we brainstorm words that would be in the -an family and I write them on a large poster gingerbread man which we use to refer to from then on.

"Bark! Bark! Bark! Come back gingerbread man!"

Our class created this alphabet story based on the gingerbread man theme.The students were instructed to make this an action story.

 

Kindergarten's Gingerbread Alphabet

The gingerbread man was almost eaten by an alligator.
He bounced as he ran away.
He ate a cookie even though he is a cookie.
 He went on a duck's back.
The gingerbread man went fishing.
He ran away from a goat.
The gingerbread man's name was Henry and he celebrates Hanukkah.
I see the gingerbread man's icing.
The gingerbread man ate Jello.
He flew a kite.
He ate lemons.
A monkey gave him a ride on his back.
He sleeps at night.
He saw an octopus.
The pig pushed him into the water.
The gingerbread man is making a quilt.
He ran and ran and ran.
He jumped over a snake.
Mrs. Tunkel was going to eat him but....
He ran under her legs.
The gingerbread man stayed away until Valentine's Day.
He jumped out a window.
The gingerbread man got an x-ray.
He went riding on a yak.
He saw a zebra.

 

"The Gingerbread Man Song"

("The Muffin Man")

Oh, do you know the gingerbread man, the gingerbread man, the gingerbread man.

Oh, do you know the gingerbread man who ran and ran and ran.

He said, "Catch me if you can, if you can, if you can."

He said, "Catch me if you can," then ran and ran and ran.

I can run like the gingerbread man, the gingerbread man, the gingerbread man.

I can run like the gingerbread man- now catch me if you can!

 

 

Bulletin Board

 

We decorated our hallway in keeping with our favorite Jan Brett story,The Gingerbread Baby. I used plain brown paper and drew a simple house outline. You can use brown butcher paper. I used double sided tape to apply "snow" (this is the fake snow used under Christmas trees -you can also use the stuffing for pillows). The students made glittery gumdrops, pattern candy canes and coffee filter snowflakes to make our gingerbread house beautiful. Around the outside we had our very own gingerbread babies frolicking in the snow.

 

This is one of the beautiful snowy evergreen trees that the students created to decorate around the outside of our gingerbread house. The "snow" was created by mixing equal parts shaving cream and glue. Some children chose to add a glitter effect.

 

As a special family project each child took home a plain gingerbread man to decorate. I couldn't believe how fantastic they looked when they came back. Works of art!

 

Santaman

 

Miscellaneous

Our class had a "Snuggle Party" right before the December break. We wore cozy pajamas and cuddled up with our favorite stuffed animals. We read again some favorite books, watched a video and enjoyed hot chocolate with marshmallows and cookies. Of course, we made our own gingerbread men!

We used Little Debbie brand ready made gingerbread man cookies. Then we put food dye in white frosting to create different color possibilities for our gingerbread men. The students spread the frosting on and then added mini baking M&Ms for buttons or eyes. We also used raisins, thin licorice for a mouth or red hots and gum drops for hands and feet.

Then we went carolling (singing "Jingle Bells" and "The Gingerbread Man Song") down the school halls. We ended our day with a grab bag gift exchange.

 

We did many activities that incorporated a gingerbread theme including some scientific experiments. One budding scientist correctly predicted that our gingerbread man would fall apart when placed in liquid. Some children predicted that our man would become mush but actually he looked pretty much the same at 10 seconds and two minutes. He only fell apart when we attempted to pull him out.

 

We made doorknob wreath decorations. These are made with small paperplates. You cut out the center and the students color them. Some years I've had the kids cut out green leaves to glue on and added rolled tissue paper holly berries. Another option is to use cotton balls to dab green paint leaves on. Then after this dries use the eraser tip of a pencil to make red paint berries.

 

 

Happy Holidays!

 

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The beautiful clip art used to decorate this page is courtesy of artists from the following sites:

Strawberry Fields

Country Clip Art by Lisa

Heartwarming Holidays

The Graphics Cupboard

Graphics by Kemi