Interactive books are a fantastic way to engage young children during a read-aloud. And, if you pair an interactive book with some follow-up book activities, you get even more early literacy building into the experience. Let’s dive into these Mister Kitty is Lost! book activities. And, make sure to grab the free printables later in this post to use with your students.
Mr. Kitty is Lost! Book
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Mr. Kitty is Lost! by Greg Pizzoli invites the listener right into the story to help a girl and dog find her missing kitty. Along the way, she describes the kitty as having 5 yellow spots, 4 orange paws, and on to 1 pink nose. In the end, we are surprised to find a much larger kitty than we were expecting.
Don’t miss Pizzoli’s other award-winning books including The Watermelon Seed and The Book Hog.
Preschool Book Activities for Mr. Kitty is Lost!
This book lends itself well to do building some preschool early literacy and math skills. Here are just some of the skills and concepts you could work on with this book.
- counting to 5
- counting backward from 5 to 1
- matching one-to-one correspondence
- identifying numbers
- identifying colors
- recognizing punctuation marks
- recognizing character emotions and feelings
- expressing answers and thoughts orally
- predicting and inferring
That’s a whole lot of learning!
Activity #1: Color, Count and Write
Materials Needed: printable for each student (see free download below), crayons, writing utensils
Skills/Concepts: fine motor practice, color identification, counting, number recognition
Let’s Work:
- Draw attention to the first line of circles/spots. Have the students recall from the story what color the spots were (yellow) and have them color in the sots. Next, count the spots pointing to each as you count. Identify the number and then trace the number on the line.
- Repeat for the remaining rows
- 5 yellow spots
- 4 orange paws
- 3 purple bells
- 2 green eyes
- 1 pink nose
Activity #2: Return to the Illustrations
Return to the bright and bold illustrations in the book for this next activity. There are so many things to notice in the illustrations. On multiple sessions of rereading, draw attention to the following.
- Notice how many times the dog barks on each page. Do the barks match the number of items we are asked to count?
- Look at the facial expressions and body language of the girl and do on each page spread. What do you notice? How does the body language and expressions help you to understand how the characters are feeling?
- Count the number of items in each page spread. Does your counting match the number described?
- Look at the background color behind the girl on each page. What do you notice?
- Draw attention to the punctuation marks (periods, exclamation marks, and question marks) on the pages.
- Describe the dog in the same detail that Mister Kitty is described.
Activity 3: Follow the Lines
Materials Needed: printables for each student (see free download below) and writing utensils
Skills/Concepts: fine motor practice
Let’s Work:
- The first sheet is in a maze format. The student should draw a line through the maze to get the dog to the cat.
- The second sheet is for students to practice different line shapes. The goal is to get the cat to the destination (food, ball, litter box, and car).
Printable Mister Kitty Activities
Grab the printable materials described above to use with students. They are a thank-you gift for joining our free VIP Growing Book by Book newsletter sign-up. Just click the purple rectangle button below to have the printable emailed to you.
More Cat Books and Activities
The cat learning fun can continue with these resources!
Read all about cats in this big list of books about cats.—> Books About Cats for Kids
And, try out these cat book-related literacy ideas too.
One of my favorite read-alouds is Bathe the Cat. It is so funny and full of learning opportunities. I created some book activities to go with the book.—> Bathe the Cat Book Activities
Pete the Cat is probably the most beloved blue cat in children’s literature. Check out these ideas to use with the many Pete the Cat books.—> Pete the Cat Book Activities
Happy reading and learning about cats!