Posted by Nicole Carney on May 31, 2013 in Bugs, Caterpillars and Butterflies, Literacy Activities, Motor Skills, paint printing, Painting, Picture Book Activities, Science Activities, Spring Crafts and Activities | 0 comments

Since our caterpillars arrived a week ago, they’ve been very busy eating and growing. It won’t be long now until they spin their chrysalis’ and transform into lovely Painted Lady butterflies!

Last week, M made a caterpillar poem and collage, and this week I’ve been keeping my bugs busy and engaged in activities inspired by Eric Carle’s beloved children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s been a spectacular week for thunderstorms in our area, so we’ve had A LOT of indoor time to play and learn! Here are some of the things we’ve been up to:

Pipe Cleaner Caterpillars

I’ve read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to M many times before, but this time I made it a bit more interactive by creating little pipe cleaner caterpillars for M and B to thread through the holes while I read, which made it a great fine-motor activity as well!

Days of the Week

After reading the story through a few times we talked about the days of the week and the order that the days go in. M has already been learning about the days of the week at preschool, so we’ve been reinforcing it at home as well. The song he sings at preschool is to the tune of Clementine:

But M and B both like this one as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPzIbbvoiMA

probably because of the clapping :).

After practicing the days of the week verbally, I wanted to see if M could match the words and put them in the proper order. I wrote each day of the week onto strips of coloured paper, and then wrote them all out onto one sheet of coloured paper as well. We went through the strips together, saying the names of each day aloud to help with recognition. I told M that each day of the week had the same small word in it and, as I emphasized the word ‘day’ when saying each word, he was able to figure it out quite quickly. Once he had recognized that each word ended in the same small word, I wanted to see if M could put the strips in order by focusing on the beginning of each word, while also comparing the words to the ‘cheat’ paper.

Here’s M singing the ‘Days of the Week song’, while pointing to the words, to see which day comes next :).

Sculpting with Play Dough

This was great fine-motor practice for M. Making round balls proved to be a real challenge! He kept rubbing the play dough back and forth, creating snake-like shapes, but after a lot of modelling, and redirection, he started to get the hang of it.

While M was busy rolling the play dough into balls, he watched this animated version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar on my laptop a few times:

Balloon Printing

Instead of making apple or pear prints to create a caterpillar body, I thought it would be fun for the boys to make balloon prints. I put some red paint on a plate and had the boys make a red balloon print for the caterpillar’s head. Then I squirted yellow and green paint onto a plate for M and one for B. I had an image of The Very Hungry Caterpillar on the iPad for them to use as a guide. M glanced at it a couple times, but B, of course, just free-styled ;).