Mrs. Hannah's Kinder-Prep: Pete the Cat

It's been great to be back in the swing of things this week after a two-week break. I missed these sweet faces. :) In order to get back on track, we got to study one of our favorite book characters, "Pete the Cat!" These books, written by Eric Litwin and James Dean, are always a hit with these kiddos, and we had so much fun reading them, making crafts about them, and incorporating a variety of skills with them as well. We read many different books from this series, but we especially loved, I Love My White Shoes, Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses, and Rockin' in My School Shoes. Many of these books are read aloud on-line, often with music, if your child loves them and you don't have them at home. I've included a few of the fun links below as well. Hope you enjoy our pics from the week!

Pete the Cat Rockin' in My School Shoes

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons Song/Book

Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes video/song

We started off our week talking about all the fun things we received and did over Christmas Break. So, what better way to talk about this than by writing thank you notes to Santa Clause for all the nice things we've gotten? It's great writing practice for these little hands, and it's always good to be thankful! :)

We hunted for letter "U" and tried not to get confused with letter "V".

We traced all the upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet for good practice.

We worked on reviewing a variety of skills covered so far on our combo sheet. We matched upper and lowercase letters, which was tricky, and we also traced and hunted for our letter of the week (U). You never realize how many letters you have covered in class until we put them all together. Wow! They've learned a lot so far!

We read the book, Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses, and then made our own fun Pete faces with shiny aluminum foil sunglasses too. Cool!

We made unicorns to remember our letter "U" skills this week. Look for these in the hallway!

We used buttons in various activities to go along with our Pete theme. We traced letters we've covered so far with buttons. It was messy but fun!

We created Pete the Cat out of different shapes and then chose a color of shoe for him. Once we decided on that shoe color, Mrs. Nicole wrote the color and we traced it for practice. There are so many color words we've been working on, so this was great review. It also used our sight word of the week ("is") in the sentence too. "Pete is wearing red shoes."

We used letter cookie cutters for play dough time during table top activities in the morning. Thanks again for all of those parents who have been sending in play dough regularly for us. We really do appreciate it!

Working on our fine motor skills by putting tiny buttons in our oatmeal container.

These kiddos also spelled their names in felt letters on our felt board as well. I'm so proud of how hard they worked to hunt for the right letters!

On Friday, we cut apart a Pete the Cat number puzzle and then had to put the numbers back in order from #1-10 and glue them back in place.

Show and Tell for Letter "U"

1 ukulele

6 umbrellas

5 unicorns

1 U.S.A. map

1 ugly dog toy :)

Playtime with friends

Exercising our minds and bodies in the green room

Praise the Lord for some sunshine!

Lunch Bunch/Bridge Afternoon Activities

We made paper cupcakes with sprinkles from another favorite author book,

"If You Give a Cat a Cupcake" by Laura Numeroff.

We worked on letter puzzles with putting upper and lowercase letters in order.

We rolled dice and counted the dots, then we placed that number of buttons on our Pete the Cat shirts.

We raced to see who would roll the most of one number on the dice to see who would get to the bottom of the chart first. Counting dots on dice is a great start to early addition facts. :) Playing board games is a great way to get into this habit.