A few years ago I was introduced to Pete the Cat as a Kindergarten teacher. What a fun, positive, cat he is! Our kids (and adults honestly) have much to learn from Pete! If you haven’t read the first book (because it’s now an awesome series of stories) and you have a young one running around, you are missing out!
Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes is a story about a cat named Pete that loves his new school shoes! But Oh-No! Pete steps in different things that change the color of his shoes! Pete doesn’t cry and instead accepts that his shoes are now a different color.
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My son is 3 and he received his own copy of Pete the Cat for his birthday from my good friend. I pulled it out last month and ever since we have been singing Pete’s song! It got me thinking of all the ways he is learning using Pete’s story!
I have started a series on my blog about how to make reading count! I want you to be able to teach your children while you read with them on the couch! Here are several ways to start doing that today!
The activities and various ideas of how to use Pete the Cat as a teaching tool are endless! I’m going to give you some now that are perfect for preschool through kindergarteners.
In this post I’ll be giving you …
- Social-Emotional Learning
- Reading Activities
- Phonemic Awareness Activities
- Number Sense and Math Ideas
- Speech and Language Support
Social Emotional Learning
One reason that Pete is so great is because he maintains a sense of positivity even when things don’t go his way or a way in which he expected! Something almost ALL young children (and some adults) are working through.
In his first book, Pete steps in different things along the way changing the color of his beloved school shoes! But Pete doesn’t cry, he keeps “walking along and singing his song”. What a great reminder to our kids that things don’t always go their way.
Here are some discussion activities I would do to support this idea …
- Tell me about a time that things didn’t go your way … (make a list either out loud or on paper)
- What tools did Pete use when things didn’t go his way? He sang a song … what tools can you use? I would be looking for things like deep breathing, taking a break, singing a song, doing something else, and other ideas that the kids might come up with!
Reading Activities
Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes is great for early readers because the words repeat themselves. Make sure to read the story to your child multiple times before you start incorporating these ideas into your reading at home.
Here are some fun and easy activities to support reading in your home using this story …
- Let your Child “Read” … As I read to my 3 year old, I say “Oh-No! Pete stepped in a large pile of strawberries! What color did it turn his shoes?” …. then I wait!
I want him to see the word “Red” as he is given time to say red. This allows him to begin to make the connection between the word and the letters. I have repeatedly let my child read the color words in this story since about the third or forth time we read it together.
- Sight-Word or Letter Highlight … I love using this highlighter tape because it is perfect for highlighting the words right inside our books! It doesn’t ruin them and it makes the words pop out to the kids. Plus who doesn’t love putting tape in a book?! Don’t worry it won’t ruin your book!
If you are working with your child or a student on identifying words (or letters) this book is perfect for finding them! The book is a lot of repetition which means that the same words are going to be found over and over. If you are working on … color words, no, in, a, of, what, did, it, his, or he you will find all of these words on about every other page!
You can even play “I spy” with these words and have you child find them in other books throughout the week as well.
- An important skill for early readers is to be able to retell. You can easily do this by having them go back through and tell you about Pete throughout the story. You can support your child by showing them how to do it the first time.
It might sound like this “Pete loved his white new school shoes! Then he stepped in some strawberries! Ut-Oh! Now Pete’s shoes are red! Pete didn’t cry he just kept singing his song.” This will also help support their language development.
Phonemic Awareness
The research is coming in strong about Phonemic Awareness and the importance of teaching it to our youngest children!
If you are looking for more information on Phonemic Awareness make sure you check out my post all about it here . . .
Anyways, back to Pete. You can use this book to teach phonemic awareness several ways. Here are a few:
- Discuss the rhyming words in the story: along, song and find other words that rhyme with along and song. Some words you could help your child with are long, strong, and wrong.
You child might even come up with silly words like mong or fong. This is okay because your child is still using what they know (about rhyming words) to come up with words that sound similar.
- You can think about words in the story and break them apart into different sounds you hear. For example you can say to your child “cat” lets listen and break apart the word “cat” to all the sounds we hear. /c/ aaaaaaaaa (draw out the short sound) /t/.
Number Sense and Math Support
- Another way to use Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes is to use it for math. You can have your child count Pete’s shoes on each page. You can also ask them to go count their own shoes!
Take your child to their shoes and show them “pairs”. You can talk about how a pair means 2. Depending on your child’s ability and age you can show them how to count their shoes in pairs faster by counting by 2’s. In kindergarten they will be exposed to counting by 10s and sometimes 5s.
- You can have your child count the number of things that Pete stepped in throughout the story. They will have to turn the pages to find different things that he was stepping in to remember.
Speech and Language Support
Young children are still learning the English language no matter how much they hear it correctly. My 3 year old is “very verbal” and the other day he said “we goed to the store”. I quickly corrected him and we moved on.
However using Pete the Cat is another great way to support our children’s language development. Remember how in reading activities I said to have your child retell the story? You can do that anywhere!
- I will bring up the story in the car and see if my son can say the words without even looking at the pictures. Its great for his development to be able to retell and repeat the story again.
- Change the things he steps in! We will say things like “Pete stepped in a large pile of bananas, what color did it turn his shoes?” Even though bananas aren’t in the book its fun to mix it up! It allows him to think of different vocabulary. Some other things he could step in are: green grapes, raspberries, or strawberry ice cream!
Have you read the story of Pete the Cat yet? If not, what are you waiting for? This is the perfect book for any young child! I love that I can work with my son on so many different activities just from our couch using this book!
Love, Ashley E
