Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

It makes me sad to think there are people out there who might not know who Pete the Cat is.  So allow me to introduce you to the grooviest cat around.

Pete the Cat is the brain child of James Dean....No, not the dead movie star, an illustrator who once drew a little sketch of a black stray kitten named Pete.  James Dean hooked up with professional storyteller and performer Eric Litwin and the rest was history.

There's a whole series of Pete the Cat books, and if you search Pinterest you will find a slew of activities for the regular classroom.  This Pete the cat project is based on the book, "Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons."  There's even a free song, you can download it Here!

The book has great links to math, plus character as it teaches the reader to not be upset even if they loose something or if something goes wrong.  

If you don't have the book, don't despair!  Plenty of people have made youtube videos of it using the official author's narration that you can find on the mp3 download above.

This project was done with kindergarten, although, if I had to do it again - I would try an older grade perhaps first or second.  

Day One: We read the book, (the kindergarteners sang and danced along to it) and drew our shapes to make Pete on blue paper.  Two triangles, an oval, a rectangle and two little circles for his paws.  The tail was the hardest.  We drew a letter J and then "made it puffy" (created a bubble letter out of it).  

Day Two: We cut out our shapes, recycled the scraps, and used glue sticks to put our Petes together.  Once Pete was together everyone got a 9 x 12 yellow paper. We traced Pete's belly to get the right size for his shirt.  Extra yellow once he had his shirt glued on was used for his big yellow eyes.  Crayons topped off the pupils, nose, mouth, and whiskers (most of them forgot the whiskers).  

Day 3: It's Button time!  The next time I teach this I will not let students pick their own buttons out.  That was a huge mistake.  There was a long line and kids were being really slow digging through the button bucket.  I call it, "Looking for the Magic Button."  Somehow they think there is a button that is better than any other button and they want to be the ones to find it.  Next time I am just going to hand them their buttons with "You get what you get, and you don't get upset." This was the first time kindergarten ever used liquid glue as apposed to the glue sticks so I took time to do an introduction demo with them on how to use it.  I am proud to report there were no "glue puddles" in my art room that day.  Three of the buttons got glued down.  The fourth they brought to me and I threaded a pipe cleaner through the button and twisted to attach it.  Then I curled the pipe cleaner and stapled it to their cats' shirts.  Finally, I twisted the pipe cleaner end around the staple to make sure it would not come back off.  

Close-up of the Pipe cleaner wrapped around the staple.

This part will not take a full class so make sure you have extention activities (remember - Pinterest has TONS of Pete the cat printable writing sheets and coloring sheets) or that you're ready to start whatever project you planned to do after this!  

Didn't they come out adorable?

I just love this one.  There's something Manga-ish about it.