Nursery Rhymes and Fun Times: c is for cat

Friday, March 25, 2011

c is for cat

We had fun talking about cats for a couple days. I even pulled out a beanie baby cat I had and he named it "Reilly" after the his nana's dog. He had fun toting it around for a couple days.

Sign Language

We reviewed the sign for cat.

Books

Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag

This book is consistently referenced on lists of best picture books. Written in 1928, it was awarded a Newberry Honor Award in 1929 (one of very few picture books to do so). It's a simple story about an older couple who wish to adopt a cat. The man sets out to find his wife a cat, and ends up bringing home "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" because he can't decide which one to bring home. The cats fight over which one is the most beautiful until only one is left. It's a great story for discussing pride and humility. Jonathan, however, wasn't as drawn in to the black and white illustrations. Watching the video (see below) made him appreciate the story more, but I think it may be more suitable for older children.

Have You Seen My Cat? By Eric Carle

In this story, a little boy has lost his cat and begins to look for her. His search takes him around the world, encountering many different types of cats. The text is very simple and repetitive, but it engaged Jonathan and he would participate in the story. It also helped his vocabulary as we encountered lions, bob cats, pumas, jaguars, etc. He would name each animal as we would see Carle's vivid illustration. This was a story he wanted to read over again- it was a definite hit!

If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond

This is a cute story, similar in style to the other "If You Give" books. However, I really didn't enjoy it as much as the other stories (particularly If You Give a Mouse a Cookie). The story didn't flow very smoothly to me. Jonathan, however, did like the story and kept saying that the cat was silly.

Videos

We watched Millions of Cats, part of one of the Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVDs.

Pre-Writing

Carisa at 1+1+1=1 has just this week launched some free Tot School printables for each letter of the alphabet. I was very excited to make use of some of her resources. I laminated a few of her "C is for Cat" pages and gave Jonathan a dry erase marker. We did the "Find the Cats" page where he tried to connect all the cats by making lines on the page.

We also did the Connect the Cats page where he traced the dotted lines. He actually did surprising well at this one. While the lines weren't perfectly straight, he got the concept down pretty well!

Motor Skills

By the end of this week, the weather turned cold again- we were in the 20s and 30s and there was no hope of going outside. So we pretended to stretch and move like a cat to get a little bit of his energy out.

We also did some work on puzzles. We used our Melissa & Doug chunky pets puzzle which, at this point, is too easy for him. He still had fun with it though.

We also used the cat puzzle printable that Carisa provided at 1+1+1=1. This was a three piece picture that he had to put together and he did a great job! It took a couple tries, but he got it.

We also did the lacing card from Carisa's printable as well. He really enjoyed poking the lace through the holes- I think he was pretty proud of himself. He also enjoyed dragging the cat card behind him as he walked. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten a picture of that one.

Art

We used more of Carisa's printables- I printed out the dot painting page and we dot-painted the upper-case C and lower case C's. We also used the Colored Cats page. I told Jonathan what color to color each cat and then he picked up the appropriate marker and colored on each one. It was a very simple activity, but one that he seemed to enjoy. He knows his colors, so I was mostly working with him on following directions. He did a pretty good job and had fun using markers.

Games

I printed out two sets of the cat shapes printable from 1+1+1=1 and we played a memory-style matching game with them. He already can name the shapes, so we worked on finding "matches". First we matched the shapes with all the shapes facing up. Then we attempted the "memory" style game with the shapes facing down. That was a little harder of a concept for Jonathan to grasp- the taking turns and turning one set of cards over at a time. But, he still had fun and got the concept of matching.

Baking

We made cupcakes after reading If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. Jonathan had fun trying to help me ice the cupcakes.