Since I’m back in school, I’m going to be doing some “Kid-friendly Fridays” every now and then! I put a lot of time into my classroom lessons, and I wanted to share some of my favorite ideas with you!
I know some of you are teachers, but a lot of you have kids. These are activities that can be done at home with your kids…they’ll love you for it!
For the first week of school, we did a “Very Hungry Caterpillar” theme. The kids love the book, and had fun doing activities related to the book!
I read the book to the kids on the first day of school, but then we also watched this fun YouTube video, which animates the story for the kids:
Then, we made our own paper caterpillars. I had cut green cardstock circles the night before. I had each student write their name on the board, and we counted the amount of letters in each student’s name. Once we did that, they got that amount of circles. Once the students had the correct amount of circles, they wrote their name on the circles – one letter per circle. Here’s how mine looked:
For confidentiality reasons, I had to blur out their names, but here’s a few that my students made:
I had them all put an extra circle on the end for their caterpillar face. They’re a super cute new decoration for our bulletin board!
The next day, we made these cute caterpillars out of egg cartons:
Each student got a section of egg carton (I cut them) and they painted them green. We let them dry overnight, and the next day we finished them. They each painted 2 black eyes on the front, and got to pick a color for their antennas. If you’re careful enough, you can gently push the pipe cleaners right into the cartons without bending the pipe cleaners. They look so cute together!
I also made up a caterpillar number book, which I don’t have a picture of. I had the kids cut the pages of the book, and it had a number from 1-10 with a different fruit on the bottom (ex. “3 strawberries”). Each student had to then make a picture to match the text.
If you want a copy of the “book” I made, leave a comment with your e-mail address, and I’ll e-mail you with the Word document!
Here’s some other fun ideas I’ve seen online for The Very Hungry Caterpillar:
Cupcake Very Hungry Caterpillar
These websites also have some great ideas for this theme:
Any other fun ideas for this theme? Is it one of your favorite kids books too? Remember – let me know if you want me to e-mail the fruit counting book activity – just leave a comment with your e-mail address!
Linking to:
Serenity Now, Under the Table and Dreaming, Stories of A-Z, Frugal Friday
Love those ideas! Super fun
Thank You for the great ideas! I have just started a in-home preschool. We are working on The Very Hungry Caterpillar next week, these activities will be so much fun! I know this is a year later, but would you still be able to email me the Word Document of the Number Book? Thanks again, your ideas are super cute! Thanks! greyandgwensmommy@yahoo.com