(upbeat guitar music) - Oh, gosh, I might be too old to sleep on the ground.

Oh, hey.

Hi campers.

I'm Mrs. Hammack.

Welcome to Camp Read-A-Lot.

I am so excited that you joined me today.

Camp is a great place for learning and having fun.

And here at Camp Read-A-Lot, we are going to spend our days reading and talking and singing and doing all kinds of activities that will help us to grow into strong readers.

Parents, there's something you can do at home too.

Did you know that reading aloud helps everybody?

It benefits all children and teens, especially those that struggle with reading.

One of the benefits is that you can read books that they're not able to read yet, and that will help them with their listening comprehension.

Choose one of the books that you loved, maybe you liked "Island of the Blue Dolphins" or "James and the Giant Peach".

Choose a story that would be engaging and fun for your whole family.

And then read a chapter a night out loud with everyone.

You are gonna find that that is one of your most cherished times and your kids are gonna tell you that's one of their best memories.

And you'll be helping them to become strong readers.

Alright, campers, it's time for our hello song.

♪ Hello readers ♪ ♪ Hello writers ♪ ♪ Hello campers ♪ ♪ I'm glad you're here today ♪ ♪ Hello readers ♪ ♪ Hello writers ♪ ♪ Hello campers.

♪ I'm glad you're here today It's time for our pledge.

So repeat after me.

On my honor, I will try my best to be kind to everyone, to have a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Fantastic.

All right, friends.

We are going to train our ears for sound today by playing the onset and rhyme game.

Don't worry if you're not sure what that means, because I'm gonna show you and you're gonna be great at it.

I have confidence in you.

And speaking of confidence, that's the strength that we are going to talk about today.

Confidence.

It's that feeling of knowing that you know what to do, and that you are proud of yourself for who you are.

And we're gonna meet a character today that I think is familiar to you.

And we're gonna see how he shows confidence.

But first I need to find my confident friend, Scooter.

Scooter.

Oh, scooter.

Where are you?

Oh, oh, you scared me half to death.

What are you doing on top of the tent?

Yes.

And you left your fishing net out.

What?

Can you tell me about this?

What is that right there?

Yes.

I see that it's a button, but I don't think it belongs to you.

Yes.

I know that it matches your shoes.

Yeah, I see that.

No, no.

That's for our story today, isn't it?

Yes.

I know.

I know.

You were thinking how smart and handsome he looks.

Our character looks with his buttons, but that's not yours.

Maybe you can borrow it later.

Okay.

Let's get to our game.

Can we do that?

Yes.

Okay.

All right, today, campers, we're going to play the onset rhyme game.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

He says he's he knows exactly.

He's confident.

He knows what onset means.

What does it mean?

Right.

The beginning part of a word.

And then the rhyme is different than how we played rhyming games kind of, but it's the ending part, which that is, that is how you rhyme words, right?

With the ending part of a word.

So it's a little tricky when we talk about it.

So here I have some pictures for you and we're going to listen for the onset.

That's the beginning part and the rhyme, that's the ending part.

So I'm going to show you what I mean.

Here is my picture of a snake.

Snake.

So the onset would be sn and the rhyme would be ake, sn, ake, snake.

Did you hear how it goes?

Okay.

Let's try this one.

Here is frog.

Frog.

Do you know what the onset is?

Fr.

And the rhyme would be of and then we put it together to make frog.

I'm curious.

Why would we need to know how to do that?

Oh, you're so smart.

He said, "Because, when we're reading, we can break apart words to sound them out.

And when we're writing, we can break them apart out loud to know what sounds to read or to write down".

Great job.

How about this one?

This is a shell.

Shell.

What do you think?

Sh.

L. Shell.

Good job.

Let's try this one.

Clock.

Cl.

Ock.

Clock.

Very nice.

And this last one, ch air.

Chair.

Terrific.

Very nicely done.

That was excellent.

That is called onset and rhyme.

It's when we take the first part of the word off and blend, and then we have the second part of the word separate.

We just separate them out so that we can hear both parts of the word.

All right.

I have a joke for you.

What do you call an every day potato?

What do you call an everyday potato?

No, not a French fry.

Yes.

I know I like French fries.

Yes.

I know I can eat them every day.

No, it's not.

No, that's not the, that's not the right answer.

Okay.

What do you call an every day potato.

A commentator.

Get it common, 'Cause it's regular tater and then a commentator is somebody who's talks.

(laughs) I love those kinds of jokes.

There's so funny.

No?

Oh, well I thought it was great.

Well, let's see.

How about the catch of the day?

Should we do that?

Yes.

There's only two.

You only caught two words.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, let's figure out what they are.

Take your spot.

There you go.

All right, friends.

We have two words for our catch of the day.

Zero.

Zero.

Do you know what zero means?

Right.

Nothing.

None.

Okay.

And, oh, this is a fun word.

How about this one?

Groovy.

Groovy.

Do you know what groovy means?

It's just a fun way to say that something is wonderful or excellent or cool.

Yeah.

Groovy.

Maybe you can try saying, using groovy when you talk about things, that would be fun.

That would be groovy.

(laughs) I have a friend who likes to use the word groovy all the time and every time I hear it, I think of her.

All right.

Our story today is a story about Pete the Cat.

Have you heard of Pete the Cat?

Right.

Well, this is not about his shoes though.

This is a different story about Pete.

This story is called "Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons".

Woo.

Have you been playing with my, my glasses?

My reading tools, Mister?

'Cause I see your paw prints all over them.

Goodness.

This story is written by Eric Litwin and the art is by James Deane.

Now James Dean is actually the creator of "Pete the Cat", he's the creator.

He thought of the idea of "Pete the Cat", and then several stories have been made about him.

This is called "Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons".

Now here's our front cover and our back cover.

Here's our spine of our book.

When we open it, we have a title page just with the words "Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons".

Oh, how cute.

Look.

And then they put a whole bunch of buttons.

Yes.

I see the red buttons.

And then they have another title page that actually has our character.

And then it tells us the author and the illustrator again.

"Pete the Cat".

Dedication page.

To Trey and Destiny and to Zelda Litwin, nice.

All right, here we go.

Are you ready to try it?

Okay.

Pete the Cat put on his favorite shirt with four big, colorful round groovy buttons.

He loved his buttons so much.

He's sang this song.

Let's count one, two, three, four.

There's the number four.

What song did he sing?

Let's see.

♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My four groovy buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My four groovy buttons ♪ Hmm.

A pop.

Oh, no.

One of the buttons popped off and rolled away.

How many buttons are left?

Let's look.

We had four and one popped away.

And now there's three.

Let's see if that's right.

Three.

Four minus one equals three.

Hm.

Did Pete cry?

Goodness no.

Buttons come and buttons go.

He just kept singing his song.

♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My three groovy buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My three groovy buttons ♪ Groovy.

Pop.

Oh no.

Another button popped off and rolled away.

How many buttons are left?

Okay.

Look, we had three.

There's one, two, three, but it popped off and now how many does he have left?

Two.

Let's see, two.

Three minus one or takeaway one equals two.

Did Pete cry?

Goodness no.

Buttons come and buttons go.

He just kept singing his song.

♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My two groovy buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My two groovy buttons ♪ Okay.

Let's see.

Pop.

Oh, no.

Another button popped off and rolled away.

How many buttons are left?

One, two, take away one is one.

Did Pete cry?

Goodness no.

Buttons come and buttons go.

He just kept singing his song.

♪ My button ♪ ♪ My button ♪ ♪ My one groovy button ♪ ♪ My button ♪ ♪ My button ♪ ♪ My one groovy button ♪ Pop.

Oh no.

The last button popped off and rolled away.

How many buttons are left?

Do you know?

Yes.

Ooh.

You're so smart.

Zero.

One take away one is zero.

Did Pete cry?

Goodness no.

Buttons come and buttons go.

Pete looked down at his buttonless shirt.

And what do you think he saw?

His belly button and he kept on singing his song.

♪ My button ♪ ♪ My button ♪ ♪ Still have my belly button ♪ ♪ My button ♪ ♪ My button ♪ ♪ Still have my belly button ♪ It's all good.

He's such a groovy dude isn't he?

I guess it simply goes to show that stuff will come and stuff will go.

But do we cry?

Goodness no.

We just keep on singing.

Buttons come and buttons go.

The end.

Wow.

Did you notice Pete's confidence?

His feeling proud of who he was?

It didn't matter how many buttons he had.

He felt good about himself no matter what, right?

Confidence is that feeling that you have that it's okay.

Because things that you have, shoes or buttons, that's not what is important about you.

What's important about you is you.

Because things come and things go, right?

Yes.

Well, I hope you were paying close attention to that story because we've been talking about confidence and we are going to retell this story in a little bit, but I want to ask you some questions first.

So how many buttons did he start with?

Right.

Four, four.

And how many did he end with?

Oh, you're right.

It was really zero, except that he had his belly button.

That's right.

That's so good.

All right.

So what are some of the activities that he did in the story?

What did you notice first?

Well, maybe not first, but what's something you noticed he did in the story?

Oh, he was eating ice cream.

Did you notice that?

I did too.

And he looked pretty confident.

What else?

Yes.

Yep.

That's right.

He was riding a skateboard.

I saw that.

What's that?

Oh, Scooter noticed he was surfing.

Did you see that too?

That's good.

Well, in a few minutes, we're going to retell this story and figure out how we can show confidence in ourselves.

And when things are going, maybe not as we planned for us.

Scooter is always very confident.

So SCooter pop on up here because I am confident that you are going to really enjoy this joke.

Are you ready?

You are?

(laughs) Okay.

So here it is.

What is the world's tallest building?

He doesn't know, do you know?

What is the world's tallest building?

Hmm.

It's the library because it has the most stories.

(laughs) Get it?

Stories like we read stories, but stories like the building story, one, two.

Yeah.

That's good.

Did you see how I made that work?

(laughs) Stories.

It has the most stories.

I know, it's good.

Boys and girls, we have been talking about being curious and being confident.

Sometimes when things are difficult, it's hard to stay confident isn't it?

Right.

So it's tricky to feel like we know what we're doing when we have a difficult time.

Maybe reading is hard for you.

And it's hard to have confidence about reading.

What would Pete do?

Would he cry?

Goodness no.

He just kept going, right?

And that is what I want you to remember about Pete and about confidence.

I want you to just keep trying.

The more you continue to practice reading and trying things that are difficult or hard for you, the better and easier those things will get.

Let's go to our craft table where we're going to retell the story, using our felt board and you can come along and help us.

Are you ready?

Do you think we should take the story with us to help us?

Oh yes.

He said we ought to take the story and he's really worried about those buttons.

I don't know.

What am I gonna do with this guy?

Yes.

I know.

Come on.

Let's go.

All right.

We're coming over here to the table.

And one of the things that is really good for helping you understand what you read is to retell the story.

And there are a lot of ways you can retell stories.

You can just retell them just with your words, but sometimes it's really fun to do other things, like maybe make puppets and retell the story using the puppets.

Remember we had puppets on a stick for our chrysanthemum story or like Molly Lou Melon we used a bag puppet.

You could make bag puppets for the characters in your story and retell the story.

If you have a brother or a sister or a friend, they could also help you.

You can also retell the story as if it were a play.

And if there's more than one character in your story, each person at your house could read the part that is the character that they are playing.

That would be really fun.

Well, today I have a flannel board set.

Flannel is a type of material.

And so I have our main character, here he is.

Oh, I should probably turn it this way because he's nice and tall.

And I don't want him to come off the edge of the flannel board.

All right.

So there's Pete, Pete, the Cat.

And he had, how many buttons, do you remember?

Four, all right.

So let's count them.

One.

Oop.

Let's get that back on there.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

There he has four groovy buttons.

All right.

So in the story, what happened?

He was singing, right.

So let's put our musical notes up here.

That reminds us that he was singing.

So here's Pete what, how did his song go?

♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My four groovy buttons ♪ Right, that was his song.

What happened?

Right.

Pop.

Oh, no.

One popped off.

Okay.

So watch, we're gonna pop that button off.

Oh yes.

Fine.

You can hold the red button.

Okay.

So one button popped off.

How many buttons are left?

Do you remember?

Yeah, look.

Three.

Because four take away one makes one, two, three.

Did you know that reading stories can also help you with math?

That is so cool.

Because campers, reading is the key to everything.

You have to be able to read, to do math.

You have to be able to read, to be a scientist or wonder about science, like our friend Albert Einstein.

Reading is the key to everything you want to do.

All right.

So let's get back to our story.

What happened next?

Let me see.

I'm gonna check the story to make sure you're right.

So one of his buttons popped off.

And then what happened?

Do you remember what he did?

He just kept singing his story.

Right?

Singing his song.

♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My three groovy buttons ♪ Then what did he do?

Okay.

So first he was sitting in the chair and one of his buttons left.

Then he was, do you remember?

Right.

He was riding on the skateboard.

Was riding on the skateboard.

One of the buttons popped off, bye.

And now he has, how many?

Yes.

Good.

Look at that.

Two.

Three minus one equals two.

Great job.

One, two.

All right.

Then after the skateboard, he kept singing about his groovy buttons.

He didn't let that bother him.

He still had confidence in who he is.

And then what did he do?

Was he, so did it go from there two, to his belly button?

No.

No, it did not because he was eating an ice cream and you know what?

I don't have an ice cream cone for him to eat.

Isn't that crazy?

But let's just pretend he has an ice cream cone and one of them pops off and he says, "Oh no".

But oh, goodness me, he just kept singing.

♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My buttons ♪ ♪ My four, my poor groovy buttons ♪ No.

He wasn't said about it, was he?

No, he wasn't.

He was fine.

Nothing bothered him.

And then he went on his surf board.

That's the one that Scooter likes.

Yeah.

And it popped off.

And now he has, how many?

None.

One minus one is zero, he has zero buttons.

And that's when he noticed his belly button.

Isn't that silly?

Pete the Cat is such a silly guy, but we can learn a lot about confidence from him because there are not a lot of other characters that are as confident as our friend, Pete.

I hope that you'll practice being confident.

What is something that makes you feel confident or proud of yourself?

What's something you do?

Write it down, so you remember.

♪ Skinnamarinky dinky dink ♪ ♪ Skinnamarinky do ♪ ♪ I love you ♪ ♪ Skinnamarinky dinky dink ♪ ♪ Skinnamarinky do ♪ ♪ I love you ♪ ♪ I love you in the morning and in the afternoon ♪ ♪ I love you evening and underneath the moon ♪ (imitates wolf howl) ♪ Skinnamarinky dinky dink ♪ ♪ Skinnamarinky do ♪ ♪ I love you ♪ ♪ And you and you and you ♪ I hope you had fun learning about confidence with our friend, Pete and Scooter.

And I hope that you'll come back to Camp Read-A-Lot tomorrow.

I have another great story for us and another great activity.

Another one, that's a little bit about science and I don't think you're going to want to miss it because it is a great story.

Have a fabulous day, read a good book and feel confident in who you are.

Bye-bye.

(upbeat guitar music)