The Very Hungry Caterpillar

It is the end of April but we are still getting snow and 50 km/hour winds! I had to think quickly to revamp our plan for the week as it was clear that that majority of our time was going to be spent inside. I decided to do a literature study of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. 


On Monday, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar story during Circle time. After reading the book we got busy with the paints! Big Tots painted egg cartons while the little tots did mess free finger painting. After the egg cartons had dried, We added pipe cleaners for antenna and googly eyes so our caterpillars could see! 

On Tuesday, we re-read the story then worked on our own personal Hungry Caterpillar books. We used the printable books from Making Learning Fun and just added some of our own drawings. These books served as picture prompts for re-telling purposes. They turned out great! To continue with our weekly theme, we took a trip to the John Janzen Nature Centre and enjoyed playing in the Discovery zone. This gave us a nice break from the house! 

On Wednesday we did a retelling/sequencing activity to see how much of the story the children remembered. First we coloured the food that the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate. During the colouring stage, we worked on our fine motor skills and colour recognition  After colouring, our pipe cleaner caterpillars "ate" the food in sequential order. The children loved counting the food and trying to remember what came next!
On Thursday, we took a bit of a break from the Very Hungry Caterpillar story and read Crunching Munching Caterpillar. We used this book to compare and contrast it to the Very Hungry Caterpillar story. The children enjoyed predicting what would happen next in our story. I used this time to ask various comprehension questions and probe some higher-level thinking. 
On Friday, it was a gorgeous day so we spent the majority of the day outside. We drew caterpillars and butterflies with chalk and discussed the various colours we were using. We even saw a butterfly! When asked "Before it was a butterfly, what was it?" the children happily responded "a fat caterpillar!" You can't get a better demonstration of learning than that! 




Until next week,
Alicia