It was Pete the Cat week in my Kindergarten class during week four, and here are my lesson plans! I am excited to share all of my ideas and freebies with you. I hope that they are useful. Enjoy!
Remember, just as last week, you can download them and print them out. But just by clicking on the lesson plan below, you will be able to get live links to many blog posts or the websites where you will find more information on the different lessons. Download it here.
And now, on to Pete Week!
These lesson plans also follow my Pacing Guide that you can download on my Free Downloads page. So each concept that you see taught refers back to the Pacing Guide, and is aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
I am going to expand a little below on some of the things that might be a little unclear or need further explanation. Again, the print that is in black is the part that doesn’t change. The print in blue is the part that changes each week. All I usually do is print out one of these blank lesson plan masters with only the black print on it and then fill in whatever I want to do for the week. I am giving you a generic version of this to use, just in case you want it. It does not have any specific times of day on it, though. You can download the blank lesson plan form here.
We did these things every day:
We used these DVD’s and the Jumpin’ Numbers and Shakin’ Shapes Flash Cards to help use review rules, sight words, numbers, shapes, and letters during the first couple months of school. As the children begin to master each concept, we are able to drop some of the songs, etc.
We drilled on the Zoo Phonics flash cards every single day as well. They REALLY help the kids learn the sounds of the letters! I think I forgot to put it in my lesson plan above. So sorry! It’s as natural to me as breathing.
We also did a daily section from this book on Phonemic Awareness by Michael Heggertry every day, assuming nothing happened to prevent it.
And we used these Classroom Management Posters a couple of times as well. (The set contains more printable posters than what is shown here, though.) Read about them here at the bottom of the linked post.
This “How to Solve Disagreements” Visual Aid set is also great for teaching and getting conversations started about solving problems with peers, bullying, issues regarding defending yourself when necessary, etc.
Our sight word of the week was “see,” so we sang that song just about every day, too! Below you will see a sample of what the sight word songs look like on the DVD’s. The movie below, though, is not the “See” song, but the “His” song, which is from our Sing and Spell Vol. 4 album.
Here is what we did for Language Arts:
Monday: We read a new easy reader book that I wrote myself, based on Eric Litwin’s Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes book! I took the text, simplified it to the “enth” degree, tried to keep the story intact, and then was able to use most of my existing pictures that I drew of everybody’s favorite pal Petey. I focused on using the word “see” this week, since that was the major new sight word for the week. I love the way it turned out! You can download the book here.
In this lesson, the children were supposed to practice reading the book to me, and then they had to find the color words and color them their respective colors. Then, they had to find the word “see” each time it came up and highlight it (or color it) yellow. When they are done, they are supposed to try to read it to me or another adult again, trying very hard to point to the words (track) correctly as they go along. Usually, some of them will realize that they are not necessarily pointing at the correct words as they attempt to “read” their little books aloud, because they will see that their fingers are not landing on the word “see” when they say “see,” etc. This is really an “ah-ha!” moment for a lot of children, and that is why I really LOVE this type of activity for emergent readers!
This is how you prep the Easy Reader. It’s really quite easy! You just print it out front to back, and then fold it as shown. When you read the last page, you just unfold it. That’s it!
Tuesday: Practice sequencing Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin. For this activity, first I got out my trusty Pete the Cat doll. Then I went to Target and found some colored baby socks for some pretend shoes! I was able to find white, blue, and brown easily enough, but for some reason, I couldn’t find red. (I bet I’ll find red socks closer to Christmas!) So I used an extra pair of white socks in the pack and died them red by dipping them into my Colorations Liquid Watercolors, LOL! It worked, but boy, were my hands STAINED! I found some red pompoms for strawberries, blue pompoms for blueberries, some brown scraps of construction paper for the mud, and a little plastic tub for the pail of water. So the task was to take the doll and the manipulatives and practice retelling the story in the children’s own words. After that, we transferred what we knew to the pictures, and put the pictures from our little book in order, too! I prepped that by cutting apart the pictures from the book above, gluing them onto colored cardstock, and then laminating them. You can see how it turned out below.
Wednesday: Review the HeidiSongs Rhyme Practice cards and then play the bingo game that goes with them.
Thursday: Introduce Concepts of Print with the HeidiSongs Concepts of Print Practice Cards. Then pass out a book to each child. (I had several different copies of Pete books, so we used those! Call out instructions such as, “Everyone find the front cover!” Wait for the children to find the front cover and pat it or point to it with their hands. Do the same for each of the following items:
– Front cover
– Back cover
– Title of the book (I have them circle the words with their fingers to help distinguish it from the front cover.)
– Title page
– Author’s name (if your group seems ready for this)
– Illustrator’s name (if your group seems ready for this)
– Words in the book we know
– Letters in the book we know
– Sentences in the book we (might) know
Friday: Drill and practice whole group with the Words that Start the Same Practice Cards.
This is what we did this week for Math!
Monday: We practice making groups of more or less than a given number using shapes. That way, we could review the names of the shapes as we went along! To do this, all you need to do is have someone in the group roll a die and count out that many objects. The child to his right must then count out more objects than that number. The next player rolls the die again, and counts out that many objects. The child to his right must count out less, or fewer objects than that number. (You can always just randomly choose whether the child to the right should make a group of more, less, or equal, or have someone spin a spinner to decide.)
Tuesday: Practice Matching Sets with the Pete the Cat Button Center.
Wednesday: On Wednesday, we went back to doing our number writing with our Counting Creatures worksheets in the dry erase sleeves. The kids LOVE these things, and it’s so trouble free in those dry erase sleeves. Gotta love them!
Thursday: Practice making sets that are more, less, or equal with buttons. Basically, we did the same thing as we did on Monday, but we used buttons this time to stick with the Pete them, and also use the spinning wheel from ReallyGoodStuff.com to spin for more, less, or equal. This is a great wheel! But I have learned to keep it out of reach when it is not supposed to be in use; it’s quite tempting!
Friday: Review numbers and shapes with the Jumpin’ Numbers and Shakin’ Shapes Cards. We just got a new video edited on how to use them, and I think that it really describes it well. Check it out!
This is what we did for art.
On Monday through Thursday, we worked on our Shape Song Book. This is a “Singable Book” that we sell on our website. (Yes, last week’s was free- sorry, not this one!) It’s a cute project, though.
Friday: We did our Pete the Cat Guided Drawing Project on Friday. You can download this one free here.
This is what we did for our Learning Centers:
Monday: I decided to do science on Monday! I added to last week’s Ramps and Marbles Simple Machines exploration center, and then added in a home made pulley. The children were supposed to lift up the marbles with the pulley before sending them down the ramps. Yes, it’s a very TECHNICAL science center, ha ha! But they really enjoyed the pulley! (It was kind of also a “spilley…” 
Tuesday: For Tuesday’s learning center, we made a Mini Sing-Along Song Book for our sight word of the week, “see.” (These masters come in the Workbook, Mini-Songbooks, and Flashcards Workbooks for each CD/DVD. There’s one for each word, each volume.) I don’t seem to have any pictures of that one, though, so I put in a picture of the songbook for the word “the” instead. Sorry!
Wednesday: On Wednesday, we practiced matching sets with the Tubs and Clips matching sets center. I got out one of the other previous matching sets centers, too, so that there would be enough for them to do, since the kids are getting better and better at this!
Thursday: Thursday is motor development day! As long as I have a volunteer, I send a group out during our rotation for a great P.E. activity. I love it especially when DAD’s come and volunteer for this. The kids just love it!
This is a great set up! The kids step on the rungs of the ladders onto the blocks, and then onto the balance beam at the back. Then they jump on the spring board into one of the circles, and then crawl on the mat to go under the stick on the chair. After the children crawl under the stick on the chair, they jump on the mini-tramp a few times and bounce off onto the other mat. Then they step onto the larger white block, and then the long flat brown block that leads to the smaller block and the ladder. When the kids are all done, they can ride the tricycles. Such fun!
The rest of the lesson plans are written in the download at the top of these lesson plans. Again, I hope that this is useful to you! Please leave me a comment if it is!! If it is not, I will probably move on to other things…
– Heidi
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