6-B Celebrates The Holidays!

Thank you for Visiting!

6-B was so lucky to have class visitors come in and share about Lucia Day in Sweden! We loved learning about a new holiday tradition! We worked on a fun craft and had a sweet treat!

Thank you for sharing with us!

Busy Bee's

We completed the 1-1 Reader and will begin stories in the 1-2 Reader after the New Year!

Thank you for visiting!

Happy (almost) Hanukkah!
We loved learning about Hanukkah traditions from Mrs. K-B. Thank you for reading a story, serving a delicious treat, and providing a fun craft activity!
Love,
6B

More with Mittens- Comparing and Contrasting using a Venn Diagram

After reading "The Mitten" by Alvin Tresselt 6B read another adapted version of "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. Before reading, 6B students were encouraged to think about whether the story would be exactly the same or if there may be some differences? We found that there were quite a few differences! For this discovery lesson we decided to compare the actual mittens in each story using a Venn Diagram.

This lesson was geared towards visual and auditory learners.

A Venn Diagram is a wonderful tool for comparing and contrasting. You can write details that show how the subjects are different in the outer circles. Then, where the circles overlap, you write details that tell how the subjects are alike.

To complete our diagram, we re-read both stories and added details as we encountered them in the text. Our findings are displayed above. Below, you can see them in list form:

Ivan's Mitten (Alvin Treselt)

1. Feathery fur cuff

2. Red wool lining

3. Yellow mitten

4. Burst into pieces.

Nicki's Mitten (Jan Brett)

1. White wool

2. Stretched out but did not burst.

Ivan and Nicki's Mittens (shared attributes)

1. Warm

2. Lost in the woods

3. crowded (with animals)

4. Stretched out

5. Found (by their owner at the end of the story).

The Mitten by Alvin Tresselt

This week, 6B continued our discovery unit on mittens. We read the an old Ukranian folktale,"The Mitten", by Alvin Tresselt. In the story a little boy named Ivan goes out to gather wood in the forest. On his travels he looses one of his mittens. Nine different animals crawled into Ivan's mitten that cold winter day. Ask your child if they can remember what happened to the mitten when the tiny cricket crawled in?

After reading the story we began our extension lessons. We first made our very own mittens that fit the description of Ivan's lost mitten. We colored the outside yellow, and the inside red. Then, as a fine motor activity, we used yarn to sew the two sides of our mitten together. Once we had made our mittens we colored in and cut out the nine animals that crawled into the mitten during the story.

With all of our materials ready, we revisited the story during our next discovery class. As I read aloud, each student placed the proper animal into their own mitten. This activity was beneficial for all our learning styles. Auditory learners heard me read the story, while visual learners could see the illustrations in the book. Kinesthetic/tactile learners benefited from touching and physically placing the animals into mittens.

It was interesting to see if our mittens would stretch and pull like the mitten in the folktale? We quickly surmised that our mitten would not stretch because our animals were merely flat pieces of paper.

After we finished the story, we shook our animals out of the mittens. Then we were challenged with properly sequencing the animals as the appear in the folktale.

Great work 6B! Our story really came alive with this lesson.

Mittens!

Our current discovery unit is on mittens. We recently read "The Mitten Tree", by Candice Christiansen. This story is about kindness and generosity. An elderly woman, Sarah, watches children as they play and wait for their school bus to arrive. Sarah notices that one small boy is not playing with the cold snow because he did not have any mittens. She kindly knitts a pair for him, and anonymously places them on the blue spruce tree next to the bus stop. Soon this becomes a game and the children eagerly check the mysterious mitten tree each morning to see if there are any new pairs of mittens?

After reading our story we talked quite a bit about mittens. Why would you need to wear them? What do they look like? How are they different from gloves? We discussed that mittens come in pairs that match. We then had an opportunity to decorate and cut out our very own pair of mittens.

After our mittens were complete, 6B all gathered on the rug and received one mitten each. We faced away from one another and closed our eyes as each friend took a turn to open their eyes and describe the mitten that they were given (a great experience for auditory learners). As we listened to the descriptions, the person who created that mitten had to raise their hand the moment they knew that it was theirs. We each did a wonderful job, and properly identified our own mittens! Once each pair was matched, they went up on our 6B mitten tree.

As an extension to this lesson we all brought in a real pair of mittens (or gloves) from home. This provided an opportunity for a tactile learning experience. 6B students needed to explore and discuss their mittens with a friend using describing words that explained how the mittens looked and felt.

After we compiled a class list of describing words (patterned, colorful, fuzzy, soft etc.) we worked on a portfolio page for the month of December. We had to properly write two describing words and accurately illustrate a picture of our mittens.

Bravo friends!