Tuesday

Black Cat Black Cat



"Black catblack cat, we want to know / where's your home, where do you go?" This questioning refrain is repeated in the poetic and gently haunting story Black Cat by Christopher Myers. It's a wonderful book and literacy connection that introduces my 1st graders to the mysterious world of an urban dwelling black cat. The book introduces or revisits new words such as roam and cityscape vs. landscape, nocturnal, pattern, texture and design.



After reading book and figuring out that the Black Cat makes his home everywhere he roams, the students paint their black cat in paint. Since we've already covered the concept that shapes and lines can make a cat by drawing a black cat in ur previous lesson, we extend those ideas to our painting. Here's a simple power point I created about black cats.

After they dry we cut them out.



Did you know that some cats have very curly tails?



After the cats are freed from their paper...we revisit the Black Cat's environment. We discover that we can see many interesting details in the Black Cat's world of the story. I created a power point here that can help generate conversation about patterns, design and texture that can be found in cityscapes.

Then the kids create a collage cityscape using newspaper and oil pastels.


Then we glue down our own Black Cat...to roam...and roam.