As we enter winter and flu season, taking an unexpected day off as a teacher can always be a time consuming and stressful task. As a teacher, I always dread getting sub plans together since for me, it is such a time consuming task because I want everything to be perfect.
I always like to be prepared for my students in case of an unexpected absence. While I am gone, it is important for my students to have meaningful work that reinforces the skills we are learning... not just busy work. My winter themed sub plans are all based on one of my favorite stories to share with my students in the winter, and "The Mitten" sub plans and can be easily printed in advance for a stress free day out.
Included are a full days worth of activities for "The Mitten." All you need is a copy of the book The Mitten by Jan Brett (affiliate link), and I always like to copy and prepare my resources in advance.
The activities that supplement the story will keep your students engaged and challenged for the entire day. They cover all subject areas with kindergarten appropriate activities, as well as instruction sheets for your sub.
To begin, I always read the story with the students and then sequencing the events to reinforce the story. It is always fun for students to put the events in order in a pocket chart and they always enjoy the participation.
Students can then get their own little hands on their own emergent reader, that is a great way for them to help remember the story sequence independently and get a text in the student's own hands.
Students at this time are pretty familiar with the story, so we complete a sequencing activity. (This sequencing sheet is a freebie at the end of the post).
Also included are quite a few other literacy activities that are common in kindergarten such as labeling, “sentence surgery,” where students create a sentence out of mixed up words and a color by code mitten where students identify the middle vowel sound in a word.
Writing is also an important skill in kindergarten. These sub plans cover two different levels of writing activities, based on the needs of your students. Many times in kindergarten, writing may be just be drawing and telling your story, while some students may be capable of writing to answer a question, so included are activities for both levels. As a teacher, it Is also to model for students and see what a "correct" sentence looks like so there is also a sentence copying and sentence "fix it" activity as well.
Math is another subject that has so many different skills levels in a kindergarten classroom. I have included a huge variety of easy to differentiate activities for math as well, based on your students levels and what you have taught in the classroom. You will see simple skills such as counting and writing the numbers, ordering numbers 1-10, addition, and counting, counting by tens, teens numbers and graphing.
You can find the whole unit here: The Mitten Full Day Sub Plans
And the FREE sequencing activity by clicking here: The Mitten Sequencing
