In Eric Carle’s charming and popular story, Have You Seen My Cat?, a little boy worries about his missing cat and travels to different places in search of his pet. The boy encounters numerous feline counterparts as he searches, including lions, leopards, and tigers—but it isn’t until the last page that he finally finds his missing pet!
This colorful repetitive pets book can be used in speech therapy to target predicting. It is also great for sequencing, noticing illustrations, and comparing and contrasting! Discover more of the speech and language teaching concepts for using Have You Seen My Cat? in speech therapy below:
Frequent Speech Sounds:
/h/ initial
/v/ final
/y/ initial (you)
/s/ initial and final
/n/ initial and final
/m/ initial
/k/ initial
/t/ final
/th/ initial
Themes:
pets
non-seasonal
Book Details:
Diverse Characters: N/A
Age Recommendation: Early Childhood, Elementary
Have You Seen My Cat?
By Eric Carle
Key Teaching Concepts
Narrative Structure:
action sequence
Narrative Concepts:
sequencing
illustration study
predicting
adjectives
compare and contrast
negation (not)
who (different people he meets)
repetitive text
Sequencing:
sequence of cats that are not his cat
Vocabulary:
lion, cheetah, jaguar, tiger, bobcat, panther, Persian cat, puma
Grammar:
adjectives- not provided in the text; however, great opportunities for practicing while describing each cat.
compare and contrast
negation (not)
who (different people he meets)
Text Features:
repetitive text
question marks
exclamation marks
underlined words for emphasis
Inferencing:
How do you think he felt when he lost his cat?
How do you think he feels looking for it?
How does he feel when he finds his cat?
Predicting:
What animal do you think they will point to next?
Who do you think he will ask next?
Where do you think his cat is?