Three Little Kittens by Paul Galdone

Students will experience the joys of acting out the story using simple props. Students will enjoy eating pie, and completing a bubble map and class graph.

A lesson plan for grade K English Language Arts and Mathematics

By Amanda Mcalpine, Carol Elliott, and Ginny Devine

About the authors

We teach at Pressly Elementary School, which is Pre-K-1st grade.

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Related topics

• Learn more about English language arts and mathematics.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• dramatize the story and understand all positions needed to perform a play.
• be exposed to the terms actors, stage, audience, props, and narrator.
• understand the use of “descriptive” words.
• read and interpret a class graph.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

3 days

Materials/resources

• Three Little Kittens big book and cassette tape by Paul Galdone
• Teacher made sentence strips to accompany book - See attachment
• Disposable dusting mittens or real mittens
• Apron
• Cat masks if available or ears
• Table and kitchen props
• Pie (homemade or store bought) with bowls, forks, pie cutter
• Graph pocket chart with cards for yes/no

Large chart paper and marker

Technology resources

None

Pre-activities

Introduce the story Three Little Kittens by Paul Galdone. Students will predict what the story will be about by looking at the picture on the cover. Discuss where to find the title and author of a book. Ask students if they ever lost some clothing (jacket, gloves, mittens, hat) and what happened when they told their parents. Begin reading the story and stopping occasionally to have children predict what will happen next or recall what just happened.

Activities

Day 1:
Read the story and follow up the lesson with a sampling of pie. We arranged for small groups of children to visit our teacher kitchen area. We talked about baking pies in the oven. After the children had a sample of pie, they voted whether they liked they pie or not. The children completed a card by writing either yes or no and placing their card in the pocket chart graph titled “Do you like cherry pie?” We prepared a column pre-marked for the yes votes and for the no votes.

Day 2
Re-read the story by listening to the cassette tape. Follow up activity--interpreting the class graph. The students determined how many children liked cherry pie and how many children did not. The concepts of more and less are emphasized. The class is presented with a bubble map. The teacher already has clip art of a pie in the center with the word pie written underneath. The children are asked to provide as many descriptive words as possible to complete the Bubble Map describing the characteristics of pie.

Day 3
Reenactment of the story. Discuss with the children what is needed to put on a play. If your class has seen a theatrical performance, talk about what they noticed. Choose students to be the actors (mother cat, three little kittens). Set up small desk or table to be the kitchen table and set out small pots and pans for the props. Discuss what props are and how they are needed for a good performance. If you have cat masks use them, but if not just having the mittens work fine. The students sitting down are the audience and explain to them they need to listen because others around them are listening. Also, they needed to clap at the end of the performance and the actors will bow while the audience is clapping. The teacher holds the big book and can have a student help hold the book and another student be the “pointer.” The children will become better actors after several times performing. I switched in new children for each reenactment. We reenacted the story about three times and after
each performance we talked about what made good actors and actresses. (speaking clearly, loudly, and looking at the audience)

Assessment

Can students:

• name the characteristics of pie using descriptive words.
• interpret a graph by using more, less or equal.
• tell the parts and terms associated with a play. (actors, stage, audience, props and narrator)

Supplemental information

Three Kitten Sentence attachment

Related websites

This is a website that provides an audio/ visual story on the web- http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/storyhour/goose/index.html

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