Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve?
By Jan Brett
Laptime: preschool - early elementary
Story Circle: preschool - early elementary
Jan Brett is one of my favorite authors and artists. Her books are always a delight to read and to look at again and again. Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve? continues her tradition of beautiful and intricate hidden pictures and story lines in the margins as well as the main body of the book.
The story takes place in Norway on Christmas Eve. Kyri has prepared a delicious Christmas Eve meal but is fearful that those troublesome trolls will come barging into the house and eat it all. Kyri's father is up on the mountain keeping a look out for the trolls and Kyri is all alone in the house when suddenly, "Knockety knock, knockety knock". Who is that knocking on Christmas Eve? Read along and find out who comes to visit and how a boy and his ice bear (polar bear) save Christmas Eve.
For more trollish fun see my post on Trouble With Trolls also by Jan Brett.
Who's That Knocking On Christmas Eve? -
Laptime Lesson Plan Ideas:
Go online and learn about:
Polar bears - Polar Bear International
The Northern Lights - Wikipedia, YouTube
Finnmark, Norway - VisitNorway.com
Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve? -
Story Circle Lesson Plan Ideas:
Make Polar Bears
You will need - outline of a polar bear for each child, cotton balls, glue, black beads or google eyes
- Pass out the outlines to the children
- Give each child about 20 cotton balls
- Stretch the cotton balls flat
- Glue the cotton onto the bear outline to make fur. Remind the children that they only need one drop of glue for it to stick. Too much glue will seep out of the cotton.
- When the bear is covered in fur, glue on an eye
- Be sure to give your bear a name
When the bears are finished have the children write or dictate what tricks their bears will perform for the people in Oslo.
Northern Lights pictures
You will need - a piece of paper for each child, crayons in deep colores, i.e. purple, red, blue, orange, black crayons (one for each child is ideal or two or three can share), paper clips, plastic combs
- Look at pictures of the Northern Lights
- Using the deep colored crayons, have the children cover their papers with stripes of color about about 2 inches wide for each color.
- When the whole page is covered with colors, have the children color over the whole page with a black crayon. Press hard the black should thickly and completely cover.
- To make the Northern Lights, use the comb and start at the top of the page. Pull the comb down and put enough pressure on it so that it combs through the black crayon and allows the colors to show through.
- To make shapes in the Northern Lights use the end of the paperclip to draw trolls, bears and other Christmas shapes.
- This is a project that takes a little patience. It might be a good idea to do it in stages.
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