Students can reenact the story with puppets as a narrator reads the book. Make kitten puppets in various poses by photocopying illustrations from the book, mounting them on tag board and adding craft stick handles. Pass the puppets out to the class, and as you read have the students with the corresponding kitten puppets come up and recreate the action. This activity will reinforce sequencing, cause and effect, text-to-self and text-to-world connections, as well as listening skills and vocabulary. The puppets can also be a center activity used for sequencing, or for dramatic play with or without a book on tape.
Sight words are just one of many possible literacy concepts that could be linked to "Kitten's First Full Moon." Early readers can brush up on their sight-words using typed copies of the text in which you have blanked out the sight-words (is, the, and etc.). They can read the text and fill in the blanks to check for comprehension and sight-word spelling. Type or write these text-blanks in miniature books and your students will enthusiastically read, complete, and illustrate them.
Henkes's illustrations in "Kitten's First Full Moon," are distinctive. Discuss his use of high-contrast black and white images with your students. Then use this style of drawing to create your own class or individual works of art. Students (especially older ones) could create new stories in the style of Kitten, about other animals encountering new experiences. Younger students may just recreate illustrations for the existing book, or illustrate a class constructed extension to the story (What will Kitten do on his first new moon night?).
Kitten's First Full Moon" can set up a study of the moon for your class. Students will enjoy studying phases of the moon and what causes them. You can also introduce the scientific method beginning with Kitten's observations of the moon. How could kitten test the hypothesis that the moon was a bowl of milk? Go outside and have your students make observations about nature and use the scientific method (observe, hypothesize, test, conclude) to investigate their questions about the world.