Positional Words with Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus

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My muses and I have been working on this for a month now, creating at home and trying these in the classroom.  Hopefully you can squish this in before you jump into fall themed activities.  

But you will need the Pete the Cat: The Wheels on the Bus book before you begin!!

 Back to the beginning...

First, I simply read book to my class so they could enjoy it.  We watched the accompanying video available on Teacher Tube:

Pete the Cat Wheels on the Bus

 (Others are available on YouTube, if you can access those from your school server.)

Next, I used the illustrations in the book to discuss positional words.  

Click on the image below to download the list of questions I used.

Then we made this anchor chart of the terms!

******I explained that the bus is turned so that we were looking at its side and therefore the front and back area would look a little differently.************

After this I gave students a copy of a Pete and bus to color.  We brought these to the carpet work with them demonstrating each positional term. 

Pete Manipulatives

Bus Manipulatives

Then we followed up on a different day with this cut and paste activity.

Cut and Paste Positional Pete

Finally, I gave students a reader using these terms as a culminating activity. 

 

It was perfect!! We are studying the word "is" and students could find it and highlight it in yellow.

Pete's Bus

I hope you can use and enjoy these. I am sharing because I was not able to find any positional word materials that were appropriate for the beginning of school.

Shapes Week

Okay, it was more like weeks, but that is because my colleague and I like to spread things out over time, so we are revisiting concepts at regular and repeated intervals.  But a shapes week sounds fun!!
Each time a plane shape was introduced, we read a Lakeshore big book and created a little project to go with it. My class also had fun creating shapes with craft sticks.

The hexagon proved to be very challenging!

Students had to think about the different amounts of sticks required to make a square different from a rectangle.

I loved this activity!

These were the big books we used to introduce our featured shape of the day.

Our projects...

This shape was filled in with tissue paper rectangles.

 Click here if you want a rectangle worksheet for a project.

Click the image to go to Kidzone for a Itsy Bitsy book.

I had a late meeting the night before this project so the students ended up tearing paper to fill in the triangle.

Click here if you want a triangle worksheet for a project.

Click the image to go to Kidzone for a Itsy Bitsy book.

This is one of my favorite projects!  Students searched magazines for blue colored pages to fill in the circle. 

Click here if you want a circle worksheet for a project.

Click the image to go to Kidzone for a Itsy Bitsy book.

This was my square from last school year.  It is colored in the center and outlined in yarn. 

       Click here if you want a square worksheet for this project.

                           

This year I ran out of copies so we have an alternate version where students glued craft sticks into a square and colored the inside.

Click the image to go to Kidzone for a Itsy Bitsy book.

The hexagon project was a challenge to come up with my colleague wanted to have students use small hexagons to fill in one large hexagon.  But, the smaller hexagons did not fit in well when she tried them inside.  I also knew my students would struggle with cutting out small hexagon shapes correctly.   Instead, I had students watercolor this page.   

Here is a copy of the project worksheet.

Here is a copy of a plain hexagon worksheet if desired.

We had no book for hexagon, however I did find this video.