Caterpillars

We recently ordered a cup of caterpillars from Insect Lore.  This has been one of my favorite things to do with the kids over the years.

 Kate (with messy hair) made some caterpillar art with a paper towel tube dipped in paint.  She added some details with a paint brush.

 She got a kick out of this caterpillar snack.

 Right before a caterpillar forms a chrysalis, it makes a J shape.

Kate has remembered this little fact, and days later (we already had butterflies at this point) she strung beads onto a pipe cleaner and told me it was a caterpillar in the J shape about to form a chrysalis.  Ahhh, see, this is why I love doing this so much; it is a great learning opportunity.

Leaves and Caterpillars

We love Eric Carle's books.  When I saw the leaf shaped paint samples at Home Depot (thanks Valerie!), I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them.  Does this page look familiar?

That is a page from The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

We took our leaf paint samples and punched some holes in them.  (R is in love with her new helmet; she does not like to take it off.)

We glued the leaves onto white paper and drew a stem and tree branches. C and R finger painted the caterpillar using green paint for the body and red paint for the head, just like the caterpillar in the book.  

They also added legs, antennae, and faces.  This is R's finished picture:

C made one too, but he decided that he did not want his art photographed, and I respected his decision.

Caterpillars!

Our caterpillar larvae arrived! We are looking forward to observing the metamorphosis of our caterpillars.

C and R have enjoyed listening to the following books about caterpillars and butterflies:
From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman
Monarch and Milkweed by Helen Frost and Leonid Gore
Butterfly Butterfly by Petr Horacek
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Fancy Nancy Bonjour Butterfly by Jane O'Connor

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Today, March 20th, is also special because it is The Very Hungry Caterpillar Day. This wonderful book by Eric Carle turns 40 today. We had our own celebration.


I found these wonderful printables at the First School site. C colored all of them a while back. I had actually planned to do a project based on this book months ago and these printables have been sitting in an envelope already colored for quite some time. I forgot I had them until my sister told me about Very Hungry Caterpillar Day.

We read the book together and C and R both enjoyed helping tell the story. C knows the days of the week now and this book is a great way to reinforce his knowledge.

Egg cartons, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes were transformed into these adorable caterpillars.

This one was made by R.

This one was made by C.

C and R colored butterflies.

I found a song called Butterfly Cycle (copyrighted by Suzy Gazlay) sung to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and we sang this a few times.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of our favorite books and we definitely had a lot of fun with it this week.

Today we will be making more butterflies and I will post the photos later!

This is a very short video of Eric Carle talking about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. http://www.eric-carle.com/short_video.html