Pete The Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

 

Title: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

Author: Eric Litwin

Illustrator: James Dean 

Recommended grade level: Pre-school to Kindergarten

Common core standards addressed:

• PK.CC.1-6: Counting and Cardinality:  Know numbers names and the count sequence. Count to tell the number of objects. Compare numbers

• PK.OA.1-2: Operations & Algebraic Thinking. Understand addition as adding to and understand subtraction as taking from. Understand simple patterns.

•     PK.G.1-2.: Geometry. Identify and describe shapes (squares, circles, triangles, rectangles). Analyze, compare, and sort objects.

Summary: Pete the Cat puts on his favorite shirt and as the day goes by he begins to loose his four groovy buttons. Pete starts off with four buttons and as he loses them children will begin to understand the concept of subtraction.  Does he cry? Goodness no! He keeps singing about the remaining buttons on his shirt. This fun sing along helps children gain a sense of understanding how to subtract as well as sometimes we loose things and thats okay!

Rating: ***** (five stars).  I absolutely love this book and my students do too! Not only does it have a catchy tune to help understand mathematical concepts it also has a way of letting children know that sometimes things come and go.  It is a great way to introduce subtraction and addition, all while making it fun and easy to get! 

Classroom Ideas:  What a great way to teach math through song and literature! Not only is it engaging, but its easy to understand.  I would create a yellow shirt just like Pete’s and laminate it.  Children will get a numerical problem next to the shirt and reenact it by placing different buttons onto the shirt.  This will help children identify their numbers, different shapes, colors, and sizes of the buttons all while using one to one correspondence to find the sum of the math problem.