Summer Reading Fun: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 This week we had fun with Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. His books are so wonderful and so widely loved that you can find countless ideas out there to go along with any of them. It was hard to narrow things down to just these few.

 For our play dough activity this week the kids got to play with red and green play dough (favorite recipe here), large googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and an assortment of all our favorite play dough toys.

Our craft was caterpillar sponge painting. Instead of buying a bunch of cheap sponges and cutting them into circles, I bought a package of foam hair curlers from the dollar store. I took the foam part off the plastic frame and cut them in half in order to have enough for all the kids. It worked GREAT!

 Our sensory play was the biggest sticky wall I've ever made. I cut out a TON of green and red circles out of foam sheets, as well as grass, flowers, clouds, etc. I drew a sun and a few plants on the non-sticky side of the contact paper before taping it to the wall. Most of the kids had never seen a sticky wall before, so it was fun to introduce a new idea to them all. If you don't want to cut shapes out of foam, here's another route you could take)

 Our gross motor activity was feeding the Hungry Caterpillar. I painted a giant caterpillar onto a piece of foam board and cut a hole for the mouth. I propped the board up in front of an empty laundry basket and let the kids throw toy food in the caterpillar's mouth. Throwing things is always a big hit with the kids.

 For our snack we ate grape caterpillars. I wasn't sure about giving the kids pokey sticks, but they really really loved this snack! If I had just handed them the skewers and a bowl of grapes they would have loved to make their own, but I didn't think and made them ahead of time.

 I try to always have some other books that fit the theme for the kids to look at, so this week I had several of Eric Carle's bug books. Here are the ones we had, click the image to learn more about the book:

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