Letter C is for Caterpillar

I'm a little behind getting my post up about our letter C week. We did C is for caterpillar and based our unit off of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar, a story my kids adore.

First we made caterpillars into the shape of C's for our letter craft activity. I printed black C's onto the green card stock so the kids would have a pattern to follow when gluing their circles down. Some of them chose to have the caterpillar head start at the top of the C and some chose to start at the bottom. Both ways turned out really cute. Even Adelia managed to get hers mostly in a C shape.

Second, we played complete the caterpillar pattern. Aaron and I (but mostly Aaron while I directed) made caterpillar pattern cards on the computer, and a pile of different colored caterpillar pieces to complete the patterns with. I printed, cut, and laminated the cards and the pieces to make them last longer. The idea is to set the card down and have Ivan use the pieces to complete the pattern. He was a pattern whiz! I couldn't believe it. Lincoln struggled with patterning for a really long time, so for Ivan I took it very slow and started with mostly easy patterns. He went through them just like that. And I had to invent more difficult patterns for him right on the spot using the extra caterpillar pieces. We had a good time with it.

On the third day we did the life cycle of a caterpillar using pasta. I had the kids flip through The Very Hungry Caterpillar and determine the stages and the order of the caterpillar's life. Then we took a paper plate and divided it into 4 sections and labeled them 1-4. In the first section we glued a few pieces of Acini Di Pepe pasta onto a paper leaf for eggs. In the second section we glued a Spiral pasta onto a real leaf (the kids decided it would be more authentic to have a real leaf) for the caterpillar. In the third section we glued a Shell pasta onto a twig we drew with marker for the cocoon. And in the fourth section we glued a Bowtie pasta for the butterfly and added some antennae with marker. I thought they turned out really cute.

 Mom, Lincoln, Ivan, Adelia

Our fourth activity we did over the span of two days so the paint could dry. We'll call it Caterpillar Names. For the first part, we finger painted a branch and some green leaves. Then I cut some empty toilet paper tubes into a bunch of round pieces, and put a round piece into 7 or so different colors of paint. They used the tubes to stamp circles (aka caterpillar body parts) onto the branch. Then we had to let things dry. On the second part of the activity, we practices writing our names by using one body part per letter of our name. Then we added legs, antennae, and faces to our caterpillars.

For our fifth activity we got lucky and caught a real live caterpillar while we were up playing in the canyon. We brought him home, put him in a jar, and will be observing him over the next several weeks. We've had him for 2 days now, and he's already made his cocoon. It'll be fun to see what happens! Linked up with: