A popular book series in our classrooms is Pete the Cat. These books offer a jazzy rhythm, provide inspiring messages, and offer slip in cognitive skills for children. This week, we decided to bring Pete to our virtual circle time. We found a video of Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons online. The music and rhythm of the read-aloud simply cannot be replicated. I highly suggest introducing your children to the read-aloud version if you haven’t already! The website http://www.petethecatbooks.com/ provides the audio version which would be easy to use while interacting with a felt board story.
Prior to our meeting, the children were asked to create a button at home in one of the colors Pete loses. These include red, green, blue, and yellow. The children then brought their button to our circle time. After listening to the story, we shared our buttons. Some children colored a button, some cut their button, and others used paint. The buttons were all unique! As each child shared their button, we graphed which color they chose to bring. The graph was created using PowerPoint.
PowerPoint has many features that can be adapted to create activities for children. A background, shapes, and animation provides the basis for this graphing activity. The first step is to create a background. I used Gimp (https://www.gimp.org/downloads/) to create a jpeg image of buttons.
The following steps can be used to create the interactive graph:
Open a blank page on PowerPoint. Delete the text boxes so you have a clean slate. Choose Insert then select pictures to choose to insert an image from your file. Place one image of each color button across the bottom of the page.
Next, you will need to create the rows of rectangles above each button. Simply select insert shapes, then the rectangle to insert the shape.
Copy and paste the squares until you reach the top of the page. The default for shapes is to create a blue shape. Leave the shape blue until the end of our process. It is easier to manipulate a colored shape. Once you have the columns created, you will begin the animation process.
Select a square, then choose Animations on the task bar. Highlight the EXIT animation options. Select the animation of your choice for this square.
Next click on the animation pane. This will turn on the column on the far right of the screen. This will display the numbers of each box you will be animating. Once you click the exit animation, look to the animation pane to see the rectangle number you are working on. This is important for the next step, adding the trigger. Click on the lightning bolt Trigger button. Select “on click of.” A menu will appear. Select the rectangle number that is visible on the animation pane. Once you have done these steps, a lightning bolt will appear next to the rectangle on your main slide. Repeat this process for each rectangle.
The final step is to insert the button image into the background. Select the Design tab. Then choose Format Background on the task bar. Choose “Picture or texture fill” to allow you to choose your jpeg image. Click on Insert and then choose the image you created in Gimp. This will place the jpeg behind the rectangles.
Now, go back and change each rectangle to white. It was helpful to leave a light gray outline on each rectangle. This makes it easier to click on the area necessary to reveal the button.
View your activity by choosing Slideshow and selecting Play from Start. Hover your arrow above the square you which to reveal and click your mouse. If you click on an area there is not a trigger zone, your presentation will end. It is important to watch where you are placing your mouse!
We finished our circle time by doing the “Pete the Cat and the Cool Cat Boogie!” http://www.petethecatbooks.com/songs/?videoId=668