Beyond the Book: Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"

We are BIG Eric Carle fans here, and since we are learning about the lifecycle of a butterfly right now, it's a perfect time to incorporate one of our favorite books of his, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In fact, my older reader has liked this book since he could first get his hands, er, mouth on it! Now a new little literacy lover has joined the family to share in our love of this book. We even have an infant-friendly soft copy and caterpillar rattle that was a baby gift from Big Brother's infant days!

This morning, Big Brother couldn't wait to see our caterpillars, who have been in the house for three days now. They are, indeed, already getting bigger and bigger!

Day 3

Table Time was already set up with a simple journal prompt using cut outs of a caterpillar and a butterfly (Dollar Tree) and a story prompt. My son was eager to invite his Tatty to draw with him even before he ate his breakfast. Later, he dictated his story to me. He has been enjoying hands-on exploration and play with our theme related toys and materials and talks a lot about various aspects of the lifecycle of a butterfly--many of which he learned and remembers from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Carle's classic and beautiful illustrations help dictate the story of this life cycle as a caterpillar hatches from an egg, eats and grows and eats and grows, builds a cocoon and emerges as a beautiful butterfly! The story also incorporates counting and days of the week--two important developmental target skills for preschoolers, as the Very Hungry Caterpillar increases his food consumption by one item over the course of a week.

We've had our board book copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar handy on our shelf throughout our gardening unit and my toddler has requested to read it together daily. He certainly knows it well enough now to "read" along! Today, I brought it out during our morning circle time and we sat by our flannel board. As I read the story, I used a flannel board set I had constructed several years ago while I was teaching. I printed some images and drew/cut out others. You can create your own set in this way or even check out some of the great free printables and activity ideas that are listed on this fellow blogger's post. Sometimes we also retell the story using toy food and our toy caterpillar. Retelling children's books using props and felt board sets is a great way to spice up an old favorite or to introduce a new book while appealing to a variety of learning styles.

He loved retelling the story on his own afterward! If you'd like to introduce a great theme-related fine motor activity to a preschooler and make your own flannel board set at the same time, provide your printed and/or cut out fruits and foods along with a hole puncher for cutting out caterpillar "bites!" Squeezing a hole punch is a great way to build those little muscles in the hands!

Next it was time for our little craft activity. There are so many wonderful arts and crafts ideas related to Eric Carle's beautifully illustrated books. You can explore ideas all across the internet and in resource books. Since we are in the process of growing our own butterflies right now, I decided to combine that lesson with our target story in this cute little Lifecycle of a Very Hungry Caterpillar collage. I created our vocabulary sentence strips in advance and a sample. We used a combination of stickers and items cut from construction paper. You can do the same or draw your own pictures. You can print images from the computer and I have even seen the lifecycle of a butterfly depicted in dry pasta and beans. In the past when I have done this project with students I have done combinations of all of the above. For the sake of my own little guy, I pre-cut our shapes today, wrote on the associated vocabulary words and let him have fun with the gluing and sticking stickers. I am most often a fan of process art over these types of "cookie cutter" projects, however, there are important skills that are developed through following a sequence of directions and being able to copy and recreate from an original sample. I do not "force" him to recreate his project exactly as my sample is and rather use language like "this is how I made mine, but you can make yours how you like." Over the course of my working with children of a variety of ages, some like to do their own thing, some like to copy exactly (and some get frustrated if/when they cannot) and others do a combination of both. My son falls into the combo category!

He is quite proud of his work!

We had a great time reading, playing and crafting about The Very Hungry Caterpillar and it was a great extension activity for our current learning theme. Want to read some more great Eric Carle books related to gardening and creepy crawlers? Check out

• The Very Lonely Firefly
• The Very Grouchy Ladybug
• The Very Busy Spider

and

• The Tiny Seed

You will likely be able to find copies in your local library! Until then...

Happy Playing!