Eric Carle

All of my nerdy teacher dreams are coming true with these fun author/illustrator weeks! I love hearing them use the words author and illustrator, and even say that they want to be one some day. I also love hearing them use the names of the people we're learning about and seeing their excitement as we learn more about them. So, this week was all about another common favorite, Eric Carle, and they were so excited to see the books and show me which ones they had at home and already knew all about. It was fun to help them learn about an author they already knew, and introduce them to other books by him too.

 
Dramatic Play
Since so many books by Eric Carle are about bugs, we played with bugs in dramatic play, and had all of Eric Carle's bug books as part of it. This was a huge hit with the kids!! We even took the bug catchers outside each day to search for live bugs too.
 
 
 
Blocks
We went with the bug theme and had a large bug floor puzzle, plus bug dominoes, and bug number puzzles. These were lots of fun and got lots of play time. They especially loved the floor puzzle and seeing such large pictures of their favorite bugs.
 
 
For the second week, I highlighted Eric Carle's book, Friends, and set out 2 multicultural floor puzzles. The kids needed more help from me on these, but we got them put together with cooperation!

 
Art
 Q tip painting
 



Easel painting
I have a few pics of the kids doing it and it was a huge hit! They loved painting like a real artist :) Since I only have 1 easel with 2 sides, they were great at taking turns at the easel or sitting at the table and it was a constant turnover of kids painting.

Tissue paper squares and glue. 
No pics here either, but lots of great creativity and art!

Cloud art
Inspired by Eric Carle's book, Clouds, I set our blue paper and cotton balls with glue so they could make cloud pictures. We hung some of them up around our spring tree since spring can be cloudy and rainy.
 
Small Manips
Ladybug ABC puzzle with The Grouchy Ladybug
 
Hungry Caterpillar Colorforms storyboard
 
Hungry Caterpillar puzzle
 
Rhyme puzzle 

Snack
We ate some snacks from The Hungry Caterpillar: plums, strawberries, apples, oranges, strawberries, pears, swiss cheese, and cake. They ate as they watched the movie version of the story. The movie came in handy on the next rainy day when we couldn't go inside, so we watched a few more stories during snack.
We read Pancakes! Pancakes! and made my favorite pancake recipe. They were a huge hit! They each ate 3 and wanted more. You can find the recipe here.  

Outside
 I filled the sensory table with blue water and rubber ducks and had the book, 10 Little Rubber Ducks


Being interested in bugs, we took the bug catchers out each day and had lots of fun searching for and catching bugs. I had found some big worms the weekend before while pulling some plastic out of my garden area, so I saved some to pull up with the kids and we found lots of huge worms! They loved that. We also found slugs and ants. One day, we saw a curled up spider and thought it was dead. They asked if they could pick it up and I just asked them to use the tweezers (only because spiders freak me out). Once they got it in a bug catcher, it started running like crazy and freaked me out, but not the kids! They loved it and one girl wore it the whole time outside. Gross, but I'm glad they don't have my irrational fears.
 
 
Large Group
 Day 1, we read The Hungry Caterpillar, and made pattern caterpillars with pipe cleaners and beads. I had leaves with holes punched in them and they thought it was so fun helping their caterpillars "eat."


 
Day 2, we read The Mixed Up Chameleon, and talked about Eric Carle's style of illustrating. I had paper with different colors painted on it, and they told me what shapes to cut out and they helped me put together a picture of their choosing, an elephant. Kind of :)
 
Day 3, we read Polar Bear Polar Bear, then worked on graphing the characters from that book.
Day 4, we read The Tiny Seed, then planted sunflowers in a cup.
 
Small Group

 I helped my groups work on their number books.
Our mom volunteers helped our kids make Hungry Caterpillar pattern necklaces.
They also played The Hungry Caterpillar game with the kids to work on counting.