Storybook Summer post by Jackie of Ready Set Read

Pete the Cat became a famous cool cat in the book, “Pete the Cat: I love my White Shoes” and the follow-up hit, “Pete the Cat: Rocking in my School Shoes” both by Eric Litwin. Pete the Cat is back with a new book, “Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons”. In this story, Pete loves his button up shirt so much that he makes up a song about buttons. Even as the buttons pop off one by one, Pete keeps singing. We love this cool cat and the latest Pete the Cat book definitely measures up to the fun of the first two books.

Book Activity: Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

After reading the book, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, we created a Pete the Cat math picture and story. We began by making a shape picture of Pete the Cat.

To make your own Pete the Cat craft you’ll need:

• Large oval for the body
• smaller oval for the face
• two triangles for ears
• four rectangles for legs
• a curly-q tail out of blue.
• two oval yellow eyes
• a square white nose
• some rectangular black whiskers
• four red shoes for Pete the Cat (I initially forgot Pete’s red shoes, but my boys definitely remembered that this cat wore red shoes!!)

I laid these all out on one sheet of construction paper so you could see the sizes of the patterns we used. Of course, you could probably save paper if you laid them out differently.

For the rest of the project, you’ll need:

• four groovy buttons
• pipe cleaner
• glue
• tape.

Once our Pete the Cat craft we formed, we added the all important buttons. In the book, Pete counts down from four buttons to zero buttons. I gave my boys four buttons. I told them to put some of the buttons on Pete the Cat. Following the story line of the book, the other buttons have popped off. In order to show them popping off, we threaded the extra buttons onto a pipe cleaner. I wrapped the pipe cleaner around my finger and then we taped it to our page.

Once our craft was finished, we were ready to write our Pete the Cat math story. Following the pattern of the book, we wrote, “Pete had _____ buttons. _____ buttons popped off. How many buttons were left? _____.”

Pete the Cat says, “Buttons come and buttons go.” However, Pete the Cat has come to our house, and he’s not going any where! I have a feeling these much loved books will stay with us through out the boys preschool and early elementary years.

Thank you so much to Make and Takes for allowing us to participate in the Storybook Summer Series!

Jackie Higgins is a reading specialist turned stay at home mom to two boys. She lives in the St. Louis, MO area. She has 8 years of classroom teaching experience and has taught fifth grade, fourth grade, and first grade. She also taught Reading Recovery and early literacy groups. Her favorite students in her teaching career are her two little boys! She enjoys sharing their journey growing into readers at Ready. Set. Read 2 Me.blogspot.com. Ready. Set. Read 2 Me provides early literacy article, printables, freebies, and book activities.