Winter Fun Is Better With Friends in a Delightful Picture Book for the Winter Season

Annie Silvestro's Mice Skating is a delightful new picture book for ages 5-8 that has a lesson about friendship. Fans of ice skating will enjoy this fun read aloud for the winter season. Field mice are supposed to hibernate during the winter season, but Lucy has absolutely no interest in sleeping through the winter. She just wants to have fun. Lucy loves to put on her skates and go ice skating in the winter. Her friends just want to sleep. Lucy wants her friends to have fun with ice skating and she really wants them to join in the fun because skating alone is not as much fun as skating with beloved friends. Lucy wants to share the fun with crunching on the ice, the feel of the cold frosty air that winter bring, and the nice feeling that one gets when they wear fuzzy and warm clothing in the winter. But her friends hate winter! Lucy ventures out to play in the snow by herself but still thinks of ways to coax her friends to join her. She brings the snow inside for an indoor snow fight, but that fails to coax her friends to go outside. One day Lucy accidentally discovers ice skating when she slid on an ice patch. She made some homemade skates and the fun began. She also made a surprise for all of her friends. Lucy took her friends out to the ice and demonstrated the fun that they could have if they skated together. All of the mice learned a valuable lesson about friendship. Having fun with friends is much better than doing things alone.

Teagan White contributes her talent as an illustrator with delightful illustrations that help to tell the story. Each page is filled with colorful illustrations of Lucy's fun with winter. White uses both the dark colors of winter and pale colors to capture the season in her illustrations.

Mice Skating was published by Sterling Children's Books and has an ISBN of 9781454916321.

I always had fun with delightful picture books in my early childhood classrooms. The winter season with concepts of snow and ice were difficult to teach in Texas and now that I am in Florida, these concepts are even more difficult to teach, but creative teachers can always come up with ideas when they use fun read aloud stories such as Silvestro's Mice Skating.

*Read Mice Skating in a group story time session.

*Make a class graph of the number of children who have actually seen ice and snow and experienced cold weather. Some children who have visited grandparents in the northern states will be able to tell about their experiences if you live in a southern state with no ice and snow.

*Bring in ice cubes and conduct an experiment with a timer to see how long it takes ice to melt.

*Make snow cones for your class snack. What are the favorite flavors that you can add to your snow cone?

*Make a class graph of children who have participated in ice skating and those who have not. This presents the opportunity to introduce a math skill in reading a graph. Which graph line is longer?

* Have children record the winter days' temperatures for one month of winter. Call attention to the coldest days and the warmest days. Does the temperature get warmer toward the end of the month?

*Recall the things from the story that Lucy does to get her friends excited about the winter season. Brainstorm ideas in your class about activities that are available in the winter for them to do that they cannot do in other seasons. Children who live in the northern states will have a longer list of these activities. What activities do they like to do with their friends?

*Brainstorm ideas about feelings about having friends. Lucy was successful in teaching her mice friends that doing things with friends is much better than doing things alone.