Today we started our study of the letter “C” and the color yellow. We chose to learn about caterpillars.
We made caterpillars out of the letter “C”. I found the idea on No Time for Flashcards.
I first had all of the children color the letter C. Then I cut them out and we glued them to yellow paper. Next, the children glued on wiggly eyes, pom poms and pipe cleaners to complete their caterpillars. I thought they turned out so cute!
For story time we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar
by Eric Carle. This book is such a wonderful story about the life cycle of a butterfly. In addition it helps children learn the days of the week and counting. This is a favorite book for my children and my preschoolers really enjoyed it, too.
To reinforce one-to-one correspondence and practice counting I came up with a themed idea. I cut leaves out of green construction paper and numbered them 1-5. I covered them with contact paper for durability. Then I cut some brown pipe cleaners into smaller pieces to be used as fuzzy caterpillars. I set out a plastic pair of tweezers and asked the children to place the right number of caterpillars on each leaf. Not only was this good number practice, but the tweezers made this a good fine motor skills activity as well.
We also made egg carton caterpillars and used a lot of yellow since it is our color this week. I cut egg cartons in half both vertically and horizontally which allowed me to get four caterpillars out of each carton. We painted them and added craft foam legs, pipe cleaner antennae, and drew faces on them.
I also allowed the children to use a yellow play silk to wrap up like they were inside of a chrysalis and then emerge as a butterfly flapping its wings. The following poem from No Time for Flashcards was great for this activity.
The Little Caterpillar
The little caterpillar snuggled on a leaf,
Spun a little chrysalis and then fell asleep,
While she was sleeping she dreamed that she could fly,
When she woke up she was a butterfly!
Check back tomorrow for a post about how we have observed some caterpillars for the past two weeks.
