The Three Little Kittens LOST their ALPHABET MITTENS: Virtual Book Club for Kids featuring Paul Galdone
This month the Virtual Book Club for Kids is featuring books by Paul Galdone. He is known for creatively illustrating many classic children’s tales and rhymes such as The Three Bill Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Little Red Hen, etc.
The book we choose to create some activities for was The Three Little Kittens. This has always been one of my favorite nursery rhymes … probably because I really enjoyed the way my mom read it to me when I was a child. I loved the way she used different inflections in her voice to show the emotion and remember it fondly to this day. Therefore, I gravitated toward that book for this month’s Virtual Book Club so I could share my love for the rhyme with my own daughter.
For these activities I cut out 26 pairs of mittens (52 total) out of card stock paper and on each pair I wrote out the uppercase letter on one mitten and the lowercase letter on other … creating 26 pairs of Alphabet Mittens!
After reading the story with my four-year old daughter, I showed her the pairs of mittens and then we had fun with several different ways to play and learn with the Alphabet Mittens:
The Three Little Kittens LOST their Alphabet Mittens in the Sensory Bin
I hid them in a sensory bin I had created and asked my daughter to identify the letters as she found them in the bin. (This particular bin has thistle seed and some gems, but any dry sensory bin would work great)
Hide and Go Seek Alphabet Mittens
My daughter and I took turns hiding the alphabet mittens around the house and the other would go and find the missing mittens. After we believed we found them all, we would come back to the table and line them up in alphabetical order to see if any were still missing!
Hanging them Out to Dry
Just as the kittens do in the story, we hung up our mittens. With each Alphabet Mitten my daughter hung up on our makeshift “clothesline” with a clothespin I would have her identify the letter. This was also a great fine-motor skill strengthening exercise. (and could also be a great way to work on spelling or sight words!)
Other ways you could use the Alphabet Mittens:
- Practice spelling words or one’s name
- Play a game of Memory to find the lower and upper case matches
- Play Go Fish! using the Upper and lower case pairs
- Take them to a nature center or park and have the child find them in alphabetical order along a trail like a scavenger hunt.
Instead of ALPHABET MITTENS, you could also make:
- Color mittens
- Number mittens (to identify numbers or to mix and match for addition, subtraction, multiplication, & division facts)
- Shape mittens
- Spelling, Sight, or Vocabulary Word mittens
Now let’s check out what other great activities the Virtual Book Club for Kids came up with to go along with books by Paul Galdone!
Laura Hutchison
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Love the mitten match!
This is such a lovely activity! Thanks for the great idea: we might try the shape mittens. I love the picture of her with the sensory bin! <3
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What a great activity to go with a classic story! Thank you for sharing at Sharing Saturday!
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What a wonderful activity!! Thanks for the idea!