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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Brett Jan, Most Recent at Top [Help]
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1. Tuesday Tales: Cute Easter Books for Kids #1 (The Easter Egg by Jan Brett)

photo by terren in Virginia

One of the cute Easter books for kids is The Easter Egg by Jan Brett. In my opinion, you can never go wrong with Jan Brett books!

*Picture book, fantasy for preschoolers through 2nd graders
*Hoppi the young bunny as the main character
*Rating: Say hello to one of the cute Easter books for kids this year–you won’t want to miss this touching story, The Easter Egg by Jan Brett, OR the marvelous illustrations.

Short, short summary:

Hoppi is ready to start on his first-ever Easter egg for the Easter Rabbit. The bunny who decorates the winning egg gets to hide eggs for girls and boys with the Easter Bunny! Hoppi goes out and sees all the beautiful, and I do mean amazingly beautiful, Easter eggs his bunny friends are creating. Once again, Jan Brett’s illustrations on the border of the book tell more of the story than the text and main illustrations do. Besides all the bunnies that Hoppi talks to about decorating eggs and who offer him advice, she also shows amazing rabbits creating all sorts of cool eggs that match each of their personalities. But the most important border picture to keep track of is at the top of each page and shows the robin in her nest. This robin becomes a very important part of Hoppi’s story when squirrels cause one of her beautiful blue robin eggs to fall out of the nest. Hoppi sees this, and he agrees to keep the egg warm for the mother robin. However, this gives him no time to prepare his egg for the Easter bunny. So, what will happen when the Easter bunny comes, and who will win the prize to help hide eggs on Easter morning? The Easter Egg by Jan Brett is one of the cute Easter books for kids this 2010 holiday season.

So, what do I do with this book?

1. Ask children to design their own Easter eggs based on their activities and interests. Give each child a cut out of a large Easter egg. If a child is interested in hunting, he could make a brown and green camo egg with maybe some splashes of orange. If she’s interested in dancing and baseball, she could make an Easter egg to reflect that. When reading the book to children, pay close attention to the illustrations and the different types of eggs, so children can see how the decorated eggs are unique and exemplifying each bunny’s personality.

2. Discuss why the Easter Bunny chose Hoppi as the winner even though he didn’t design an egg himself in this super cute Easter book for kids. Ask children why what Hoppi did for the robin was so special! Ask students to compare a time in their lives when someone did something special for them–even something like a parent cooking a favorite meal. Students can discuss how this made them feel and why people who do special things are worthy of awards. You can take this discussion one step further and make “Easter Bunny Awards” with students for people in their lives who have helped them. (This is a good home school activity, too.)

3. Pick four or five Easter eggs out of the book or out of Easter pictures from the Internet and let students be the Easter Bunny. Print, cut out, and line these Easter eggs up on the chalk board at the bottom, one next to each other at the same height. Give students a post-it note. Students write their names on the post-it note and hang it above the egg that they like the best. They hang the post-it notes one on top of another, so students are creating a type of bar graph. The top of one post-it note touches the bottom of the next post-it note, and so on. When the class has finished voting, the post-it note bar graph should show the

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2. Timeless Thursday: The Mitten by Jan Brett

photo by >>>WonderMike<<< www.flickr.com

Today, in East Central Illinois, I am surrounded by snow and wind and chilly temperatures. So what’s a better Timeless Thursday book to remember today than The Mitten by Jan Brett? I remember when I was studying to be an elementary education teacher in the early 1990s, and everybody raved about Jan Brett–especially The Mitten. In one of my classes, we had to do a cross-curriculum unit on a book where we created activities in various subjects such as math, social studies, science, and reading. I did Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco, but one of my classmates did Jan Brett’s The Mitten. And I was smitten. :)

One of the best things about this book is the art and the border around each page that Jan Brett has become famous for. Not only are her illustrations wonderful and something I could never imagine doing in a million years, the borders are clever and help readers predict which animals might enjoy the boy’s mitten next. For example, the text on one page is discussing how Nicki lost his mitten. The border is showing us mole tracks on one page and a mole on the next. Then the next page’s text is about the mole finding the mitten and resting inside.

This Timeless Thursday Jan Brett classic, which is 21 years old in 2010, can be used in the classroom in so many ways. Many art teachers use her border idea for art projects in elementary art lessons. Teachers use The Mitten to work on predicting or sequencing skills and read tales from other lands (this story comes from a Ukrainian tradition). Parents can share this wonderful book at bedtime, use it to develop an interest in knitting, and even to talk about responsibility with their children. I mean, how many of us have lost a mitten? I have! I should probably have mine tied to my winter coat as we speak.

The Mitten by Jan Brett is a great winter book to share with children at home or at school!

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