Week 3 - The Very Hungry Caterpillar

It seems wrong to only be on week 3, but there was a week of vacation and a week of being sick that kind of sidetracked our schooling.  To be completely honest, I'm pretty upset with myself that already I lost the habit of journaling every night, and that I went into the week without an organized plan of attack.

I did my best to wing it, telling myself that we are really just only starting and that I am learning how to best approach this as we go.  Well... lesson learned: Be Organized! Be Prepared! Be One Step Ahead!

So this week we did some activities centered around The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.  With more time spent preparing we could have done so much more.  It's no wonder this book is such a favorite.  In a few beautiful pages it offers a science lesson (the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly), counting practice (counting along as he eats his way through the week), color identification (describing the color of each fruit), and reading/language development (the repetition of "he was still hungry" is a great way to get kids to fall into the rhythm of the story, join in and "read" along).

Egg Carton Caterpillars

Lacing Activity

I color copied the pages from the book that had all of the foods lined up.  I cut out each picture, laminated them, cut them again, and hole-punched through each piece.  

Once of the best parts of this book is the holes through all the foods as you turn the pages, so this activity was a fun way to "eat through" the foods along with the caterpillar while working on some fine motor skills.

Big Boy went back to this activity several times during the week.  Lacing like this can be a source of extreme frustration for him (he HATES to fail), but encouraging him to stick with it and celebrating his success is just so wonderful.  I almost cried last night seeing him look so proud of himself for getting it (this of course AFTER he threw down the pieces, stormed away, and came back to try again...all on his own). And he cracked up every time he got a piece on and I cheered for him in an obnoxiously loud way.  

Feeding Time

We fed Little Man's caterpillar toy.  Big Boy got a kick out of this very simple, off-the-top-my-head, game. Everything was named and repeated as it was being fed to the caterpillar.  I asked him to feed the caterpillar "something green," or "something cold," etc.  I thought it was a great way to sneak learning into the afternoon, and get him to work on his speech. 

Caterpillar Counter

Big Boy is just not ready to count with me.  He resists it so hard.  But I figure I can just keep on bombarding him with numbers (same kind of goes for the alphabet) and eventually he will decide when he is ready to count along.  As far as he is concerned this was just a fun collage activity.  

I would like to point out that I didn't correct him when he glued eyes onto the caterpillar (huge progress for me!).  He did the antennae and feet all by himself too, using the book cover for a reference.

Moving on to next week I know that I need to get back into gear and plan, plan, plan!  I plan on being a very busy bee this weekend to get myself on track for our (home) school year.

And to mark the school year, I took pictures of Big Boy looking so grown and handsome.  Seeing friends post pictures of their little ones off to preschool reminded me that just because we are staying home, we can still share in some of the good ol' back to school traditions that mark this time of year- in this case: the picture outside the house marking the first morning off to school.