Our favorite classroom book by far this year is Pete The Cat, I love My White Shoes, and Rockin' in my School Shoes, by Eric Litwin. These books have captivated my entire class. No matter how exciting other books in our class are, they keep going back to read Pete! We had the listening center open with the free download from the Harper Collins web site. We burned this onto a CD so that the students could continually listen to the story being read/sang by the author. They all now sing it all by themselves daily at morning reading time.
We did many activities during the initial introduction to this book. We began by matching colors of the shoes to our shoes, graphed our favorite colored shoes and matched the colors of food to the shoes. we made easy matching games and laminated them to have out for the children to match. We then had Pete The Cat SNACK day. The students came up with this idea. We ate raspberries for red, blueberries for blue, chocolate pudding for brown mud, and water for clear/wet water! The class loved it and there was not a morsel left of their plates! They still talk about it 5 months later and we probably need to do it again! They love to talk about how we ate "mud" like Pete stepped in! There was also time to make our own Pete. I have the pattern below. It was a great cutting exercise and it stands up if you use card stock or good construction paper. Just fold paper and draw the pattern on for them to cut. You will end up with an extra tail and head. We use these for students who are not that great at cutting yet.
We also made a huge display of our author study in the hallway. Other classes were asking about it and borrowed our ideas and our CD to go with the book! You have to try this book with your students. There is a YouTube video of the author that our students enjoyed viewing as well. You must have the song from the website! Reading this book really engages every student! Try it today! There is a new book coming out on May 1st, 2012, Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of this from Amazon!
