Pets is one of the very first English vocabulary sets introduced to the 1st-graders here in Greece. Naming and coloring our pets and then hanging them on the classroom walls seemed to me meager, so I thought a mini book of pets would be a nice activity for the little ones.The motive was my wish to let my pupils create something they could connect to, use over and over, take home and show off and keep it as one of their first souvenirs from the English class.

First, we learned the names of the six pets. Then the pupils colored them on a relevant worksheet. The next step was cutting and sticking the pets on the book sheets, which I collected and did some homework (!) with, by cutting the sheets into even pages and stapling them together. 

Because I wasn’t able to find the mini book, that matched our pet vocabulary, on the internet for free, I designed it on my own. It was really a challenge! Arranging everything appropriately, so that the pages can be printed on both sides correctly, was like a puzzle,  but I really liked the adventure and so did the pupils. They couldn’t wait to take it home!

Since the pupils can’t read yet, I inserted a small picture of each pet on the right bottom of every page, as a guide for the pupils to stick their pets on the correct page, but I also added the word itself to encourage some silent reading skills. I also added numbers on the pages (1-6), so this came out handy, because we learned and practised the numbers as well.

 You can see us in action below playing: “Show me the fish/the cat/etc” ,” what’s on page 1/2/3/etc” and miming. We can even use this mini book later on to “feed” our pets with new food vocabulary!