The Very Hungry Caterpillar

So this was meant to be posted last night (Monday). But I ran out of energy and was then drowning in fish. No, really. I was tracing, cutting out, and laminating fish. Anyways....

Last Friday wrapped up our month long unit on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. This started out as just wanting to read the book in class because I found a movie version on Netflix that I wanted to show in class. Once I read the book though I came up with some ideas of activities and crafts to go along with the book. And each week when it came around to writing my lesson plan I found more and more ideas that I wanted to try. So a month later I think we are finally ready to move on to something else. Although, I continued to get requests for the caterpillar today. Nothing makes a teacher feel better than when the kids actually want to do an educational activity.

Our focus in the past few months has been colors. It started out as just matching pretty much anything I could think of (for example: here is a pig, where is another pig?). Honestly, I don't even know how we got sucked into matching color. Probably all the great color matching activities on pinterest. So we started focusing on colors. We seem to be pretty accomplished at matching colors. Color naming is a different story. I'm pretty sure when I ask what color something is, each child picks their favorite color word to say and goes with it. Then there is the child that just says, "mine." This is the interaction I continuously have with him.

Me: (After already holding up the same color marker 8 other times and all of us saying green) What color is this?

Child: Mine?

Me: It's green!

Child: Mine?

Me: Say green.

Child: Mine

Me: Say green

Child: Mine

Me: Grrrreeeennnn

Child: Mine

Me: Grrrr....eeeeennnn

Child: Mine

Me: Say green first.

Child: Mine

Me: Green

Child: Mine

Me: Say green

Child: Mine

Me: Here's your marker......

Needless to say, we have been extremely focused on naming colors. Glory be to God, we are making some progress! Well, most of us are....

The Very Hungry Caterpillar was not only a great opportunity to talk about colors but also healthy foods. Our center recently received a grant to teach Healthy Habits so we are supposed to be talking about sometimes and anytime foods and encouraging healthy activities. The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate a diversity of food which was great to start a discussion on sometimes and anytime foods. I found some amazing activities to correlate these two focuses and of course started another pinterest board dedicated solely to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We kicked off the unit by of course reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. As I read the book I made sure to make it as interactive as possible. Anybody who has read a book to a toddler understands how quickly their attention strays. As long as I keep them focused and looking for something I can get them to sit and listen. Maybe they will even remember something. The most important interactive part of the book was the first five days the caterpillar ate. I had them tell me what color and what food the caterpillar ate each day. By the third time we read the book they were telling me without me even asking.

We made a giant caterpillar out of paper plates. Each child painted a plate different color then we put the caterpillar on the wall. I found pictures of each of the foods the caterpillar ate and we pasted them onto the paper plate that matched the color of the food. Sorry the photo below does not show the an up close view of the food on the caterpillar.

 I then found pictures of the fruits he ate the first five days for us to marble paint. On activities such as these when they are required to take turns I also get out something to color with. I don't have to worry about them touching my paint, fighting with each other, or losing interest and walking away. We painted the same amount of fruits the caterpillar ate (meaning each child got to do at least two).

To keep up our discussion on healthy foods, I tried to include a food craft or activity each week. The first week we did carrot footprints which were super adorable as you can see. That was followed by painted red apples which never got cut out (way to go me...) followed up with our "Healthy Foods" and "Sometimes Foods" discussion.  Since they don't quite understand the concept of time yet we have been discussing what foods are good for our bellies. A food that tastes good may not be good for our bellies. If we eat too much of the sometimes foods they will make our bellies hurt. I'm not sure how well this is working yet but they seem to understand that fruits and veggies are anytime foods. Maybe eventually it will sink in.

 There have been many more projects correlating to The Very Hungry Caterpillar seeing as I try to an art activity every day and we have been focused on this book for the last month. But more about those activities and crafts in a future post.

If you like any of these ideas, want to see some how-to's or would like to see any other ideas I had/tried check out my pinterest boards at www.pinterest.com/kalielayne.

More to follow soon.....