Pete the Cat Returns

Today during reading time we read another Pete the Cat story.  This one was titled Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes.  To make the story more interactive I created a flannel board of Pete the Cat.  Each child was given a different colored shoe before we began reading the story.  Pete began the story by wearing his white shoes, but they changed color throughout the story.  When he stepped in strawberries they turned red.  When he stepped in a large puddle of mud they turned brown, ECT.  The children did a wonderful job of listening for when it was their turn to change the shoes.  After each "accident" the author wrote, "Did Pete cry?  Goodness, no!"  The moral of the story is:  No matter what you step in, keep walking along and singing your song...because it's all good.  We tied the story into an accident that happened in our classroom today.  A student spilt their milk on their shirt, but they didn't cry, for we just had them change into a dry one.

Today was also the first day of centers.  I split the class into four centers.  They do two centers on the first day and two on the second day.  As one of our centers the children listened to the story Forest Friends Go to School.  This story taught the children how to take care of books.  We will use clean gentle hands to turn the pages, and gently put our books away when we are finished with them.  Each child then took a book out of our classroom library.  We then went over the following concepts of print; where is the top of the book, the bottom, the front, the back, where do we begin reading, and how do we turn a page.  Please take some time to review these concepts with your child when you read to them.  To conclude the center we practiced putting the books away neatly on the shelf.