Book Trees & The Mitten

I saw these cute book trees in Good Housekeeping when I was getting my hair cut.  You just cover books with wrapping paper and add a star.  I thought they'd be so cute on the playroom bookshelf.  Any bets on how long they lasted?

Yep, that long.

(Update: I waited a year and made these into a book tree advent that the kids LOVED.)

Anyway, the second day of our book advent was The Mitten.  This is based on a Ukranian folktale about a boy with a pair of snow white mittens.  He loses one of the mittens in the snow and several woodland animals find it. A rabbit, a bear, a fox, and several others snuggle inside it.  When a little mouse squeezes in and tickles the bear's nose, he gives a great sneeze and all the animals and the mitten go flying.  It's silhouetted against the sky and the boy finds his mitten.

Our activity came from Jan Brett's website. You can print off pictures of all the animals in the book.  You can also print off mittens, but we used real ones.

As I read the book, the kids stuffed each animal inside the mitten.  The animals were way too big for our mittens, but I think it was more fun that way. We really had to crunch them in there.

When the bear sneezed, we made the paper animals fly through the air!

Update:  I saw this cute idea to make a mitten from a white paper bag for the animals at Mrs. Lee's Kindergarten: