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Compassion

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Once Upon a Book ~ The Crunching Munching Caterpillar

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The Crunching Munching Caterpillar (Tiger Tales)
by Sheridan Cain

Summary: The crunching, munching Caterpillar has dreams of one day flying like his friends Bumblebee, Sparrow, and Butterfly. As Caterpillar settles in for a long sleep, Butterfly, smiling a secret, knowing smile, encourages Caterpillar in his dream to fly. After his long sleep, Caterpillar is thrilled to find out that he really can fly and that it is not a dream!

Bible Verse

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2 Corinthians 5:17

Motor Skills

Use a pipecleaner to form the base of a caterpillar. Have you little one to string beads onto the pipecleaner to make a colorful caterpillar.

album 2.28.10 008


Math Manipulative

Cut out circles from felt and use them on your felt board to form a caterpillar. Here I made a caterpillar and my son copied it. This can also be a great patterning activity. (HINT: I glued a small piece of felt onto the back of googly eyes so we could use them on our felt board.)

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Science
Act out the four stages of a butterfly. First have them ball up on the floor and pretend to be an egg. Next, have your little one wiggle on the floor like a caterpillar. Then wrap them up in a sheet to be the chrysalis or cocoon. Finally, let them break out of their cocoon and flutter around like a butterfly!

Craft

Make a caterpillar using an egg carton. Cut down an egg carton and allow your little one to paint it. Glue on googly eyes. Poke holes and cut two small pieces of pipecleaner to use as antennae. My little boys had so much fun playing with the caterpillars that they made!




Song & Fingerplay
Roly-poly caterpillar (wiggle pointer right finger)
Into a corner crept (put fight pointer finger in cupped left hand)
Spun around himself a blanket (spin around)
Then for along time slept. (put heat on folded hands)
Roly-poly caterpillar (wiggle right pointer finger)
Wakening by and by ("stretch" right pointer finger)
Found himself with beautiful wings
Changed to a butterfly (flutter arms)
from Preschool Education: Author Unknown
 

Snack

Have a fun snack of caterpillars and butterflies. Make a caterpillar using Ritz crackers, raisins, and peanut butter.



Make a butterfly using sliced apples, a baby carrot, raisins, and pretzel sticks.



File Folder Game

Depending on the age of your tot, they may enjoy this butterfly matching file folder game.



Want to see what's coming next (and books we've done in the past)? Click here to see our Once Upon a Book webpage!

6 comments:

Unknown said...

We love this book!! I will have to try some of these ideas :)

Unknown said...

I love all your activities. I am now trying to think about how to do the pipe cleaner activity with the themes I have coming up.

Unknown said...

Love, love, love this theme unit! What creative and fun ideas! Can't wait to try a few out for ourselves! :)

Crystal said...

We are doing a spring theme this month and these catapiller and butterfly activities will work great! Thanks for the great ideas!

Unknown said...

Your post is one of my great posts of the week:

http://www.jdaniel4smom.com/2010/03/great-posts-i-came-across-this-week.html

Tara @ Feels Like Home said...

Awesome! Thank you for the wonderful activities to go along with a common book theme. We're definitely going to be doing a few of these at my house.

Anything with beads and pipe cleaners makes my daughter giddy with excitement. :)