Movin' Monday: Movin' & 'Groovin' with Pete the Cat!

Oh Pete.. who doesn't love Pete the Cat and his carefree, no stress, "it's all good" attitude? We love Pete here in preschool!

One of my goals this year is to do more activities where my kids are up and moving around while working on their speech/language goals, instead of sitting at a table.  A lot of my little ones have a really tough time sitting still for any length of time (and to be honest, I can't really blame them-- I sat in an inservice for 7ish hours last week, and while I loved the speaker and it was interesting, I know all of us SLPs were really struggling to stay focused and alert while in our seats!), so I wanted to try more activities with movement to keep them more engaged!

Anyway, I decided to kick-start my Movin' Mondays feature by sharing what we did a couple weeks ago to "move and groove" during Pete the Cat week!

(note his 'groovy buttons') :)

We did different activities based on what book we were using.  For the "Four Groovy Buttons" book, we used this big hand-drawn Pete and his buttons to work on following directions and simple basic concepts, like:

"Put the yellow button on top of the pink button"

"Move a green button to the bottom" 

"Put a small button next to a big button"

"Put the red button up high/down low"

You could also target same/different with 2 same/2 different color buttons!

For articulation, we went on a "button hunt" around the room.  

When they found a button, they had to say a speech word before moving on to find another button.  

MsJocelynSpeech has some cute button articulation packs on TpT, like this /k/ pack, and TeachSpeech365 has a "Button Bananza" following directions pack on TpT, as well, if you are looking for some other general button-themed activities!

We also used my "Snazzy Sneaker Articulation" pack on TpT that I made to use with my "back to school" activities.  They also went perfectly with the second Pete book, "I Love My White Shoes."
We played Memory with these cards, and went on a "shoe hunt" with these, too!

 What can I say? My preschoolers love hunting for any and everything!!

One thing I did to adapt the shoe cards to fit a language goal happened while I was with 2 students-- 1 was artic, while the other was working on using complete sentences with is/are.  I started off by having the one working on 'be' verbs hide the cards while I did some drill with the artic student.  The student working on articulation had to find a card, and bring it to the other student.  That student had to tell him "This is a ___" and name the item.  The artic kid then had to say the word 5x.  When they were done, I let them switch roles for hiding/finding.  It worked well and kept both engaged while working on two different goals simultaneously!

This book is also great to target associations/categories (i.e. things that are red, fruits, things that are blue, etc...).

What else did we do for Pete week?

"Rockin In My School Shoes" wonderful for some basic vocabulary (labeling) and object functions for preschool.  I found clipart for a variety of the pictures in the book (soccer ball, guitar, book etc...) and we used these pictures to play games for labeling objects and identifying object functions.

This book is also perfect for modeling short simple phrases/sentences for your increasing MLU kids.  I would model a sentence for them on each page and have them imitate (i.e. "Pete eats lunch" "Pete slides down" etc..).  This book in particular also lends itself well to inferencing and "where" questions!

The Harper Collins website has a Pete the Cat "Memory" game you can print off. I used this to model phrases/sentences, and also used this to target pronoun "He" and 'be' verbs (i.e. "He is sliding" "He is eating lunch" etc...).  I have also used this just as a general reinforcer activity!

Carrie's Speech Corner had some fun ideas for coloring pages that I used, as well.  Check out what other activities she used on her blog, too!

What are some of your favorite things to do with Pete the Cat? Stay tuned for tomorrow's "Co Teaching Tuesday" post for the Pete-themed activity I used in the prek classrooms during small groups!