“Alligator!!”
“Bear!”
“Chicken!” “Cluck!” “Cat!”
We aren’t just shouting words. They are words and my kids are shouting – but for a good reason.
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We are reading The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABCs (the Hard Way) – the latest by New York Times bestselling writer and Caldecott Honor artist Patrick McDonnell.
This phonics lesson was inspired naturally by this fun new book and I only extended it a little to also encourage my reluctant writer to do some writing as well.
The Little Red Cat Who…. Phonic Lesson
First, you’ll need this adorable alphabet book.
The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC’s (the Hard Way)
by Patrick McDonnell
We LOVE this alphabet book. My favorite Alphabet books are always the ones that share a story along the way and this definitely falls in this category. It is an A B C book, but also an adventure.
Kids will have so much fun following cat’s adventure and figuring out what each letter stands for.
Essentially this is a wordless story with a phonics lesson built in. So much fun.
It is such a creative way to work on letters and phonics skills with kids and a great book to read with anyone.
I highly recommend it for preschoolers, kindergartners, and first graders (and maybe even beyond – my almost second graders love it too!). They will all take some different away from it and they will all love it.
Materials:
Aside from The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC’s (the Hard Way) the only other things you need are:
- Dry Erase Boards and Marker (one per kid)
Technically you don’t even need that – you could do this activity orally or you could use paper and pencil too.
Activity:
This phonics lesson as I’m sharing it is for late Kindergarten, First Graders and maybe early Second Grade. With Preschoolers and Kindergarten, I would do this activity orally.
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First, pass out a dry erase board and marker to each child. Tell them they are going to be doing a guessing game with a new fabulous alphabet book.
On each page there is a letter or two. Have the kids think about what they think the letter stands for in the picture and then write it down on their white board.
When everyone has an answer written down, have them hold them up. Some of the pages are super obvious, some less so.
Make sure you are emphasizing that there isn’t a right answer – but encourage them to pay attention to the sound the letter makes. That sound should be at the start of the word they write down. This is not a spelling lesson so I wouldn’t correct spelling. I’m personally a fan of inventive spelling in the early grades. Let them play with hearing sounds and communicating their ideas as best they can.
Then, read the page together. It is essentially a wordless adventure story so you will have to tell the story if you are reading this aloud to the group – or have kids take turns telling you what’s happening.
You could for instance say “Josh, I see Jungle written on your board. What do you think is happening here that involves the world Jungle?”
This is great for oral language development and storytelling. Really you could use this book in so many ways. Gosh I love it.
Work your way through the book together.
At the end, the last page has a list of the words the author was considering when he drew the illustrations. If you want to, you can have them keep all of their words and compare to the list in the back.
OR you could compile a list for your group or class and then compare.
OR you can just have fun guessing and erase each guess. It depends a bit on your goals.
Regardless, this lesson gets kids listening to sounds (phonics), writing words, and telling stories. Can you hear the boxes being checked on their language arts goals? Bonus – it is SO MUCH FUN they’ll want to do it again and again.
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