Pete the Cat's white {and muticolored} shoes.

Why oh why did I not get into Pete the Cat {by Eric Litwin} until just NOW?!  Seriously.  I saw all of the Pete stuff floating through the blogisphere last year and I was like, "Pete the what?  No thank you."  I'd never seen the book, no one on my team had the book and I had other things to do.

Then my kids heard "I love my White Shoes" during their Book Fair preview in the media center.  And what is the only thing I heard for the rest of the day??  {you know it...everybody sing!}  I love my white shoes.  I love my white shoes.  I love my white shoes.  I love my white shooooooes.


The moral of Pete's story is this: he is chill and it is alllll goooood which makes this book a must have for anyone with students who can be moody, whiny or emotional.  {Not you?  Ok then, go ahead and get back in your bubble.  There is clearly nothing on this blog that you need!}  ;)

First, we sequenced Pete's trip down the street:

Then we made our own Petes {thanks to Deanna Jump's model} with specific shoe colors for the stories we were planning to write afterward.

Being that I happened to do this lesson on Monday after an exhausting weekend, I was not about to be cutting out fifty'leven project pieces.  I gave each kid the following pieces of paper and walked them through it.

We used a large one to make his body, the other large one to make his head {some were able to cut it in one go, others had to make a head then cut separate ears to attach} the long, skinny one for his tail and the 4 cut strips for the legs.  They used the scrap bucket for everything else.

If you like all of your crafts to look the same you should probably get Deanna's pattern but I kind of like that they're all a little different.  :)

The kids wrote a story to tell how Pete's shoes turned their chosen color.  Here are a few:

{pink because he stepped in cotton candy at the fair} 

{yellow because he stepped in honey that fell out of a tree}

{black because he stepped in hair from a man giving himself a haircut}

{Red because he stepped in tomatoes a lady dropped at the grocery store}

{green because he got grass stains from walking through a field}

My Pete is {in Jenn's words "Pete-ish"} since I used hers as a model.  I just couldn't find any Pete graphics for purchase that I liked!  There are cute blue cats...but they just look like blue cats.  {not so much what I'm going for.}  So if you like my Pete you'll love Jenn's...check out her Cause & Effect writing at Finally in First!

Our art teachers have wallpapered the hallway with all of the amazing projects our kids have done in art class this year but there was plenty of room for our Pete stories on either side of the front door!  ;)

There are even more good ideas waiting for you in the Classroom Must-Haves Linky Party.  Remember to link up and share yours!