Cause It’s All Gravy Baby with Pete the Cat

Yes, you can add my name to Pete the Cat’s overflowing fan base. In fact, I believe I’m already on there outlined in glitter and surrounded by those wavy sun lines. He is one cool cat to call your friend–and to throw a program in honor of his excellence. So what do you do at a library with 25 expected kids ages 3+ ? Beg your fiance to join you in entertaining them!

Blurb: Join in our splendi-fur-ous tribute to the cat who knows his moves and rocks his shoes and keeps on singing his song. You’ll be feline groovy! (credit: my lovely coworker Miss Connie)

Storytime

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1. Prop Story with Guitar: I Love My White Shoes with slippers and bins & Ryan on guitar
   Note: I was inspired by Beyond the Book Storytimes to replicate this magical changing game. Instead of slippers, I used flip flops from Old Navy which are only $3.50 each (no paint involved!). You can use any container to house them in while you are rocking and grooving, but the containers I used had just enough space to put the previous flip flops next to the ones I was changing into. I would highly suggest getting containers big enough for this.
2. Felt Story: Four Groovy Buttons
   Note: There are many examples of this out there, such as this one over at Storytiming. This story begs to be read with a flannel so invest the time in creating one (Thanks, Miss Carol)!
3. Magic Sunglasses – paired with giant sunglasses, of course
4. Video: Dancing Pete the Cat
5. With Guitar: Rockin’ In My School Shoes

Activities

1. Draw Pete the Cat
   Note: A great offering from Heidi Songs, this was excellent for the older kids. While the younger kids did the other crafts, I instructed about 6 kids on drawing Pete the Cat. I always feel like my programs are too babyish for older kids (because the youger they are, the harder it is to keep their attention, so I always aim younger than older) so it was nice to give them a special big-kid treat.
2. Button Matching Cards
   Note: Loved loved LOVED these cards–and so did the kids. You can also reuse these later as a great early literacy station activity. Beware, though: preparing these cards is time consuming.
3. Make Pete the Cat with shapes
   Note: I pre-cut most of the shapes in advance, especially for the preschoolers. I then put them into buckets and labeled them with the corresponding body part. This helped a lot with self-guidance for the parents.
4. Painting with food & mud– strawberries, blueberries, dirt
   Note: This was kind of a dud–except for the mud. I bought fresh fruit on the day of the program and they weren’t very juicy. Upon further investigation, it looks like other blogs used frozen fruit so perhaps this type would work best for dying the paper.