Five In A Row: Papa Piccolo

I just realized I never posted about this book!  We loved this one so much we spent two weeks on it.  It's called Papa Piccolo and it's about a tomcat in Venice who finds himself adopting two mischievous kittens.  What's not to love?  In fact, LittleBear now insists he wants to go with me on a trip to Venice...totally fine by me!

We took the opportunity to learn about cats with this book, which worked out well as we have Orbit with us in our family and he got lots of extra love and attention this week (along with a few extra pokes, but he seemed ok with that). 

Mr. Patient this week...

We talked a lot about Venice and some about Italy and enjoyed intermixing fun school things with Christmas activities...

This gondolier sings Christmas carols!

Enjoying spaghetti and meatballs!

We did our usual book work:

We also took some time to play: 

LittleBear and I built our version of a Venice canal out of blocks!

It was a fun week and now we are excited to take some time off for Christmas!

Resources and printables I used for Papa Piccolo can be found at:

Five In A Row Teacher's Manual

My Five In A Row Pinterest Board
Venice Italy With Kids on Youtube
Venice, Italy: Gondola Gliding on Youtube

Go Along Books we used for Papa Piccolo (* indicate ones we especially liked):

* Papa Gatto

* Madeline and the Cats of Rome

* Olivia Goes to Venice

* Look What Came From Italy by Harvey Miles
* Canals Are Water Roads
* C is for Ciao 
* Gabriella's Song
* What Cat is That? from the Cat In The Hat Learning Library
The Orphan Singer
Cats by Gail Gibbons

 adding the story disk to our map...