Pete the Cat

Our reading teacher told me about the book, Pete the Cat, by Eric Litwin, and sent this hysterical link that shows a little girl who has memorized the book and is singing it with what looks like an upside down colandar on her head. I decided to make a lesson for kindergarteners after watching the video.

When the book came in the mail, it had a free audio download of the author reading and singing the entire book. I scanned the book and used Corel Video Studio to put the audio with the book. The students then heard the video on the LCD projector and I made shoes for them as props. I was amazed how quickly they picked up the refrain and had it memorized. This is great for repetition and learning words. The students were singing down the hall and in the library as they were checking out books. It made me think of how difficult it is to learn a language and how easy these kids picked it up. I wish there was a song like this in Chinese so I could learn the language ; ) I didn't have time, but you could have students make their own shoes. Go to HarperCollins website for the image.

I had a parent stop by and ask for the video because her daughter loved it so much. Talk about copyright issues. I told her I couldn't because I had made the video for a lesson. I believe I can do this because of the Fair Use law. I am doing it specifically for a lesson, am not distributing it for commercial purposes, and am not making it public by putting it on a blog. Also, I could not find the book with a CD - just the free audio.

I put in a snippet of video so you get an idea of the lesson and afterwards the class is singing the song in the hallway as they go back to class. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gH58nJa53s[/youtube]