Pete The Cat And His Four Groovy Buttons

Pete The Cat And His Four Groovy Buttons

Reviewed By: Brandon Cruz

Author & Illustrator: Eric Litwin/ James Dean

Recommended Grade Level: 1^st – 2^nd grade 

Common Core Content Standards Addressed

CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.B.3
Apply properties of operations as strategies to add and subtract. Students must understand how Pete losing and gaining buttons effects the overall total and how the jacket works.

CCSS.Math.Content.1.OA.C.5

Relate counting to addition and subtraction

Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice

CCSS.Math.Practice.MP1

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

Students must keep a mental note of how many buttons remain with lack of prompting and reapply this information in relation to how many buttons Pete began with.

CCSS.Math.Practice.MP4

Model with mathematics.

Summary: Pete the Cat puts on his favorite shirt, which has four colorful buttons. He enjoys the buttons so much that he sings a simple and kid friendly song about them: "My buttons, my buttons, my four groovy buttons. My buttons, my buttons, My four groovy buttons." Then “Oops!” one of the buttons pops off. Now Pete ask’s "How many are left?” and there's a bright, large print full-page image of the math problem "4 - 1 = 3." Pete answers, "3," and then sings his ditty about his three groovy buttons, and so on, down to zero, when he has no buttons left ... except (trick question) his belly button.

Rating

This is a four star book. I’d be more apt to rate it a five if there were more overlap with other grade levels. Whilst the story is engaging and the rhymes are extreme ear worms, there is limited use for it once the applications of differentiation between addition and subtraction and their properties with anything less than double digit numbers are mastered. With that said, it is easily one of the more “fun and brisk” educational reads and would serve well with our lower leveled math students.

Classroom Ideas

1      ** This book would serve as a perfect way to delineate the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction and their relation to the sum i.e (3=4-1 OR 2+1)

2       ** Students could be given buttons or other manipulatives and solve problems with larger numbers i.e “What if Pete has 10 buttons and 6 pop off his jacket” etc.