another week at the nature center

I was looking forward to this week at the nature center since I love reading the story The Mitten to a group of little folk. This was the first time since having met Jan Brett last month, so I was even more excited than normal.

I read the story and had the kids place their animal in the mitten when it was their turn (8 animals in the story find their way into a little boys mitten). Lou had passed those out for me when we were first getting started. I printed out the animal faces from Jan Brett's web site. I just copied the masks that she shares there and pasted them in a word doc so that I could make them smaller. The mitten is scrap fleece.

We also sang this song from Mrs. Jone's website and used the animals and mitten again. Mrs. Jones also has lots of other activities for The Mitten, as well as other books.

The Mitten in the Snow Song
Tune: The Farmer in the Dell
This is the order of the animals in Jan Brett's version of the book:
A mole is the first to discover the mitten and crawls inside, followed by
a snowshoe rabbit, a hedgehog, an owl, a badger, a fox, a bear and, finally a mouse.
The mouse causes the bear to sneeze; the mitten and all its occupants go flying.

The mitten in the snow
The mitten in the snow
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A mole squeezes in
A mole squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A rabbit squeezes in
A rabbit squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A hedgehog squeezes in
A hedgehog squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

An owl squeezes in
An owl squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A badger squeezes in
A badger squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A fox squeezes in
A fox squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A bear squeezes in
A bear squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

A mouse squeezes in
A mouse squeezes in
Help us please so we won't freeze!
The mitten in the snow.

"A-choo"
The bear says, "A-choo!"
The bear says, "A-choo!"
All the animals fly out of
The mitten in the snow!

For our craft, we made a gift for the winter animals. The kids covered pine cones in shortening and rolled them in bird seeds. We didn't use peanut butter in case of allergies.

We hung all five of ours up and are awaiting our feathers friends discovery of these tasty treats.

(edited to add: actually, right after we hung them up, we watched as three naughty squirrels chewed through the yarn and ran off with the pine cones.)

I have been keeping an eye on these little birdies in the gift shop at the nature center. They were all alone and didn't have a price. The volunteers that normally work the front desk never know how much they cost and the right person is never there to declare a price. Anyway, this week, there were a bunch of people out sick and the director happened to be at the front desk. I asked her and she said, "how about 4$?" Really? I paid $4 a piece although I would have paid more. I'll have to throw some extra money in the 'feed the raptors' donation box to make up for my good deal.

It seems that I forgot to share last week's reindeer craft, and I can't even find the pictures right now. If I find them, I'll just post them later.