Monday, September 26, 2016

Pete the Cat

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons
Posted By Melissa Hemick
Image result for pete the cat buttons

Title: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons
Author: Eric Litwin. Illustrator: James Dean (creator of Pete the Cat books)
Recommended grade level: Pre-school to Second grade.
Common core standards address:
PK.CC: Counting and Cardinality. Know numbers names and the count sequence.
2. Represent a number of objects with a written numeral 0-5 (with a 0 representing a count of no objects.).
PK.OA: Operations & Algebraic Thinking. Understands as adding to, and understands subtraction as taking from.
 1. Demonstrates an understanding of addition and subtraction by using objects, fingers, and responding to practical situations.
Summary: Pete the Cat is wearing his favorite shirt. As he goes long doing some fun activities, he starts to lose his buttons! Pete the Cat doesn’t cry, he goes a long singing his new song. As Pete the Cat continues to lose his buttons, students are counting down to see what happens. But in the end there is a surprise after losing all his buttons, Pete the Cat find outs he still has one button left somewhere! Have your students sing along to his countdown of buttons.
Ratings: ***** (five stars) This book is a great way for students to learn the concept of subtraction. The books has a groovy song that students can easily learn and sing with. This book is part of a series and they all follow the same rhythm in song and lyrics. It is a great book to have in the classroom and all of my students enjoy any book that involves Pete the Cat.

Classroom Ideas: This book can be used for teaching and reinforcing subtraction in the lower grades. One of the ideas that come from this book is having students be able to first identify the numbers four to zero in objects and to their numerical value. This can be done by creating a picture of Pete the Cat with having the numerical value written on them and having Velcro spaces for students to match the correct number of buttons on the picture. From there we can create a number sentence that will be of pictures of buttons. This can be completed by using a folder and on one side having the picture number sentences and the answers in picture form Velcro onto the other side. Students can find the value that will complete the number sentence. For my higher functioning students this same activity can have numerical number sentences. These students will be able to find the answer in numerical form on the opposite side of the folder. These activities can then lead into being used with other objects and as a tool to help those students transition from objects to represent numbers to the numerical value representing the answers. 

2 comments:

  1. Hi Melissa,
    Pete the Cat is a kid friendly book that demonstrates that losing something does not have to be a bad thing. It's a good way to introduce children into counting down. The numbers are shown for number recognition, repetition is used for memory and number sentences written to go with the picture. I would use this book with my students that are visual learners.

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  2. Hi Melissa,

    you have no idea how much my children love this story. Since I learned about this book, it has become their favorite book. More ever they have been reading the whole collection of Pete the cat. Now I even use the interactive YouTube read aloud to engaged them with the singing parts and Thank you for picking up this book. After the Professor commented, I went up to read it myself. Now my children loved it.

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