The Very Hungry Caterpillar

When I did my final teaching internship in college, I had to creat a unit and teach for two weeks on my own in the classroom.  One week of my unit was The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  It was so much fun!  It is a great unit to use in the spring and after all of the work I put into it, I continued to use it every year when I got my own classroom. 
Now I get to share some of it with J.  This past Saturday was Eric Carle's birthday so I thought it only fitting to do some fun caterpillar activities this week.  With all of the weddings and VBS we haven't done much lately on the "preschool" front.  So, it's been fun getting back in the swing of things.
J and I have been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar every day and using the story telling materials to retell the story to each other.  He does pretty good but has trouble remembering the days of the week. 

We painted styrofoam balls yesterday and let them dry overnight.  Today we added eyes and a nose and put them together to make a caterpillar.  He let it eat it's way through the book.  Then we cut out a butterfly mask I had copied from one I had done in the past.  He pretended he was the beautiful butterfly. 

In the next few days, we will do some bug painting and work on the stages of a butterfly.  We will probably read some other Eric Carle books as well. 
I am so glad that I am able to stay home and spend time doing these things with J.  Even if it's just a few minutes each day, I hope that I am teaching him a few things!

"...if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20."  ~Eric Carle