WEEK OF OCT. 11 - C IS FOR CATERPILLAR

~Punkin is 26 months old.~

Theme: Caterpillars (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)
Letter: Cc
Number: 3
Shape: Circle (again)
Color: Green
Verse: "I cast all my cares upon you."
Videos:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (a very cute "movie" rendition of the story)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar (an animated version of the story)

Caterpillar Song

Starfall - C
Books:

CIRCLE / CALENDAR TIME ACTIVITIES

I realized in the middle of the week that the picture of the "caterpillar" is really an inchworm, I think. LOL! Oh well. She didn't notice.

The first day we read the story this week (though we have read it many, many times in the past), I gave Punkin a little pipe cleaner "caterpillar" to use as we read. She loved putting it through each hole as we counted the food on each page. She insisted on doing it this way every morning when we read the book. I got this idea from Delightful Learning.

I also printed out the story props from Kizclub, and she put the caterpillar through each food as I read the story.

We also put the foods in order on our chart. She then pretended to "eat" each one herself, saying, "Yum, Yum, I like it!" Silly girl!

TOT TRAYS

She was much more into Tot Trays this week than the last two weeks. In fact, she really seemed to enjoy them.

I cut apart egg cartons and glued on googly eyes and pipe cleaner "antennae." I then wrote a number on each section. The idea was for her to stick that many toothpicks into each section. She loved this and spent quite a long time doing it, though she didn't pay any attention to the numbers. Oh well. (I adapted the idea from HERE.)

This was a simple activity where I had caterpillar printouts for her to put magnetic colored pompoms on. She had to match the colors on the sheets. We've been working on patterns a lot this week, so we talked about the patterns as she did it. Then, after she did all four sheets, she decided to line them up and make her own caterpillar. Again, she really loved this.

She really enjoyed this mini green sensory tub that I put in her trays this week. It had all sorts of green things in it like green macaroni, green beads, green craft sticks, green buttons, green bears, green counters, green pom poms, etc. Her favorite part was putting the sticks down into the paper towel tube.

In keeping with the food that the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate, I put a variety of her play foods into a basket, then had her sort them by color into her "grocery" bags labeled with the colors. She played with this every day....and actually did the activity the way I intended it every time. (I thought she'd just want to take all the food and feed it to her stuffed animals like she always does.)

I got out her caterpillar and butterfly pattern block cards. She did great matching up the shapes to make the pictures. She even named the shapes for me. When she got to the semicircle, she asked, "What shape dat, Mommy?" I told her, and then she pointed them all out to me, saying, "Dat semicircle, dat semicircle, etc." The next night when we were outside, she spotted the moon and said, "Lookie dat! Moon is semicircle, Mommy!" (Which it indeed was that night.)

She also lined up all the shapes and told me, "Lookie my caterpillar, Mommy."

She made "caterpillars" by putting her round lacing beads onto pipe cleaners. I tried to have her copy a pattern card, but she wasn't into that, which was fine. I was just glad she was enjoying the lacing idea since it hasn't been a favorite in the past.

TOT LEARNING ACTIVITIES

She enjoyed her vocabulary cards again each day as we turned them over and hunted for a different one each day. This week we had all our A and B cards. I had her repeat the beginning sound of each one for me as she turned them over.

We built our letter Cc with our letter puzzle pieces to put in our ABC book. She didn't need my help at all this time because it was a bit more basic.

I filled a bucket with things from around the house that start with the hard c sound. (We're only focusing on the hard c sound and not the soft c sound at this point.) She had fun reaching in the bucket, telling me what it was and repeating the /c/ sound for me, then putting the item on a big c I drew on the back of a cereal box.

For this project, I realized she was having good practice at making a c as she traced it with glue, so I had her "trace the c with glue" a few times to get more practice.

Then we put light and dark green circles on it in a pattern. She really grasps AB patterns after this week. For this activity, I showed her the light green stack and the dark green stack. Then, she pretty much could put them on in the right order with only a tad bit of help at the beginning.

It turned out so cute!

We did a similar activity with pom poms this time. Although, I didn't have her do a pattern this time, I just had her put on the pom poms.

We did a capital / lowercase letter Cc sort. You can download it HERE. Instead of her picking a random circle and trying to decide where it went, I told her which one to look for each time, and she picked it out and glued it on the next circle in that row. She did great at this!

Then she decided to count the big C's and tell me all the colors.

I printed these capital and lowercase alphabet cards that have caterpillars and butterflies on them from 1+1+1=1. I simply cut apart the lowercase letters and put magnets on the back for her to match to the capital letters. She kept saying, "Lookie the cute caterpillars." She surprised me by doing them all (with help on the b and d) by herself, and having a great time doing it! She kept saying, "Lookie, dis ____ goes here" or "Where da _____? It goes here." We will definitely be doing this again as review every now and then (even when we aren't doing caterpillars and butterflies.)

We worked again on spelling Punkin's name. She put the sections of a caterpillar together in the right order. We did it a few times before we glued it all together the final time. It is now up on our refrigerator, and when she goes up to it to point and spell her name, she will always say, "Face, P, U, N, K, I, N." (Using the real letters in her name of course). Too funny!

I printed this number caterpillar from COAH. Once again, she surprised me with how well she was able to do this. We had to count from one each time to find out what came next, but the only ones she got mixed up on were the 6 and 9. After she put them in order, she went back and pointed to each one as she counted to 10.

We reinforced our number 3 by putting 3 dots on each color caterpillar and then counting each color. I had gotten out colored dot stickers to use with this, but when she saw the dots, she asked for her Do-a-Dots instead. So, that's what we did. You can find this worksheet HERE.

She really worked hard on unscrewing the cap on her markers. I got it started each time, but then she worked at it until it came off. Great fine motor work.

We did a color by number caterpillar that I made. She really finally understands this activity pretty well and can do it on her own. (Though she sometimes gets a bit crazy with the coloring.)

STRUCTURED TIME WITH MOMMY

We made colored caterpillars with pom poms. She had to match the color of the pom poms to the color of the craft stick we were gluing them on. Then, we added the eyes and pipe cleaners. When she was putting the dots of glue onto the green stick, she said, "Lookie, Mommy. Dare eggs on a weaf!" (Like in the story.)

We also painted a caterpillar picture. I had her paint the caterpillar yellow first, and then I mixed in some blue to her yellow paint and had her mix it up to make the green. (She kept saying, "Ooo, Geen!") Then, she painted the leaves. By the end, you couldn't really tell what her picture was of, but she had fun painting.

STRUCTURED PLAY ACTIVITIES

Playdough: Cutting out 3's and C's with cookie cutters and making caterpillars with Mommy's help.

Doing lots of Do-a-Dots.

More Do-a-Dots.

Coloring our big C with a green crayon.

MISC. STUFF

Lining up "caterpillars" with her Trix snacks.

We finally had another "Muffin Tin Meal." We ate the same foods as the Hungry Caterpillar: 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges, and then 1 piece of salami, 1 sausage, and 1 cone. I didn't have any of the other stuff....and plus, it wouldn't have all fit in the last spot anyway. :)

We also had an olive caterpillar (which Mommy ended up eating) and a butterfly sandwich to go with it. I got this idea from Delightful Learning.

We had some fun with bubbles in a spontaneous mid morning bath one day when I needed something to get a grumpy Punkin out of her "funk." She has decided she doesn't want to nap anymore (AARRGGHH!) and therefore has been VERY grumpy lately because she is overtired.

On another note, I have finally figured out how to publish documents online to share. (Patricia has been asking for a few of my printouts, so I finally sat down to figure it out.) I have added the links to some of my printouts in past posts (like the number books, the bus and apple letter sorts, and the bear graph to name a few). So if you are interested in printing any of those out, you may want to go back and see those posts.

For more Tot School ideas, you may want to visit 1+1+1=1.