Book of the Week: Thomas' Snowsuit

About this time last year, a co-worker of mine introduced me to the book "Thomas' Snowsuit" by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenco (Thank you Ana!).  This book is hilarious!!  I can pretty much guarantee that the kids will love it, but I will add this warning:  Do NOT read this book to kids that are prone to giggle fits when underwear is mentioned! ;)

I have searched Amazon and bookstores on and off for about a year and hadn't been able to find a copy.  I did find it on Amazon in the "Annikins" version, which apparently is tiny (always read the reviews before you buy something!!!).  A few weeks ago, it showed up in my Amazon recommendations as a Kindle book!  I bought it immediately!  Here's the link to the Kindle Edition and the Paperback Edition on Amazon (again, I don't know if the Paperback edition is "real" sized or the very small edition...the reviews say that it's tiny, the dimensions say 8x8).

Back to the story...Thomas has a new snowsuit, but he doesn't like it.  He is super dramatic, the illustrations are pretty funny, and I think it's relatable to kids who live in areas that get snow.  Pay attention to the facial expressions in the screenshots ...you can use them with kids who have social deficits for identifying emotion.

screenshot - I probably should have retaken w/o the SongPop notification!

As you can see, Thomas puts up a huge stink putting on his snowsuit for his mother, his teacher, and the principal, but quickly puts on his snowsuit when one of his classmates calls for him to come outside.  Throughout the story, the characters end up swapping clothing in the "enormous fights" that occur.  Prepare for the giggles!

Around the same time that I was introduced to this book, I was also introduced to Speech Room News.  The first of Jenna's awesome activities that I saw was this one:

Jenna had her students sort articulation words by sound position in her version (read the full post here).  I loved the idea, but didn't have kids who would be able to do this.  So, I adapted the activity for one of my language goals.  First, I summarized Thomas' Snowsuit.  Then I printed my sentences on yellow paper and cut into strips.  I had the kids sort story events:  Did that event happen in the beginning/middle/end of the story?

As much as the kids loved the story, they were super excited to play the French Fry Game.  They actually requested playing this game again with other stories!  I ended up doing one story a month with this activity and it was always a hit!  Want a copy of my story summary?  You can download it HERE.

Some tips:  Get clean containers from McDonald's.  If you go in to ask for them and tell them you're a teacher, they will most likely give them to you.  Get the medium sized.  These are the large ones and they're a little too big...you can't see some of the strips and you probably wouldn't be able to see a popsicle stick if you do Jenna's version.

Have you seen this story before?  What do you think?