MommaReads

Such a fun way to discuss the importance of brushing with your little ones. Lions, bears and penguins don’t brush their teeth, but mommies, daddies and kids do.

The classic tale of a boy who loses his mitten while gathering wood in the forest. Several animals, including a mouse, a frog, an owl, a rabbit, a fox, a wolf, a wild boar and a bear all squeeze into the mitten to keep warm. It’s only when a cricket tries to climb in that the mitten rips in two. The boy does finally find his mitten, but luckily his grandmother makes him another pair.

There are many versions of this story and they all contain a mitten and a bunch of animals trying to get into the mitten to get out of the cold snow. This version is a little different than the uber-popular Jan Brett version in that the grandmother in this story is more than happy to make her grandson a new mitten and the grandmother in this version also doesn’t make the mitten the same color as the snow. It would be fun to read several versions with your child and see how the stories and the illustrations compare and contrast. Being able to make connections between books is a great reading skill for children to have.

A collection of Arctic animals….10 caribou crunching, 9 muskoxen munching, 8 ravens raving…you get the idea. The clever twist on this book is that on the first page with the caribou it’s not snowing at all, but as the countdown continues, it starts snowing more and more. By the time you get to 1 moose, silent in the falling snow, it’s practically a blizzard. This would be a great book for practicing counting backwards and also talking to your children about how animals use camouflage….it’s awfully hard to see 2 snowy owls swooping when there’s snow all over the place.

This is one of my favorite Jan Brett stories. Nicki’s grandma makes him some mittens and he promptly loses one of them in the snow. A mole finds it though and thinks it’s nice and warm and just his size, so he scoots on in to make it his home. Then a snowshoe rabbit moves in with the mole and then a hedgehog and the list goes on and on until the mitten is definitely stretched to the max with animals trying to keep warm. A bear sneezing is what eventually gets all of the animals out, Nicki finds his mitten and heads home. His grandma is pleased that he has not lost his mittens, but is a little puzzled as to why one of them is much larger than the other. Brett’s illustrations on the side let children see which animal is coming up next…so much fun!

Annie’s cat is acting strangely…eating more, sleeping more and hiding in strange places and then one day she is gone. Annie is lonely and decides to leave a corn cake at the edge of the woods to see if she can get a small furry pet to come and eat it and then it would be her pet. Instead she gets a moose and then a wildcat and then a bear…not what she had in mind. As all of this is going on, the illustrations that border the page not only tell what animal from the woods Annie is going to meet next, but they also show what Annie’s cat (and her kittens) are doing. By the end of the story, it is spring and the forest animals have returned to the woods where they can now find food and Annie’s cat comes back with her new brood.

You can try to read this, but you will end up singing like I did.

There were ten on the sled
and the caribou said,
“Slip over! Slide over!”
So they all slid over,
and Seal spilled out.

There were nine on the sled
and the caribou said….

Super cute and so much fun to read…or sing. 🙂

Carlos heads out into the rainforest with his umbrella made of leaves to see some animals. Once he gets there he can’t see anything, so he leaves his umbrella on the ground and begins to climb a tree for a better view. One by one animals of all shapes and sizes end up in Carlos’ umbrella. Children can use the pictures on the sides to predict who just might end up in the umbrella next as well as being able to see what Carlos is doing while his umbrella on the ground is filling up. One of my Sunday school students must be studying the rainforest at school because he was telling me ALL about this book today and since we are in the middle of our Jan Brett author study I knew exactly which book he was talking about. 🙂

Every morning the Tomten (ornery elfish creature) comes and steals an egg from Henny. When Henny notices her friend Goosey-Goosey just had a bunch of goslings, Henny decides she wants some babies too, but that can’t happen if the Tomten keeps stealing her eggs. So Henny’s friend, Hedgie, comes up with a plan to trick the Tomten and save Hedgie’s eggs, but even Hedgie ends up being surprised in the end. This is another great example of how Jan Brett uses her illustrations to let children see what’s going on in different parts of the story. You can read this again and again and find something new each time.

A little girl loses a mitten to a hedgehog who gets his nose stuck in it so that it looks like he is wearing a hat. The mother hen sees him and laughingly asks him what is on his head. He tells her it’s his beautiful new hat. The gander, the barn cat, the dog, the pig and the horse all laugh at the hedgehog, too, but secretly wish they all had something cool to wear. By the end they all look like a winter fashion show gone terribly wrong. Your kids will love the illustrations, especially the ones on the side of each page that give them a little hint as to what is coming up next in the story. I think this is the first Jan Brett book I ever read and it is probably one of her most famous.