Eric Carle week~

This has been a very fun week of homeschooling.  We've been doing a lot of art projects and probably not doing as much handwriting and math with Sophie...but we still have tomorrow : ).  Last Sunday I started things off with making some "Very Hungry Caterpillar" cupcakes.

 I put a few drops of food coloring in the batter and swirled it around.

 Here's how they turned out!  Fun!

 Then I mixed up some buttercream icing and decorated.  At the top we have the little white caterpillar egg. Then we have the caterpillar.  That bottom cupcake is showing the cocoon.

 And last, but not least...the butterfly!  You have to use your imagination a little bit...but that was all the cupcakes I had left : ).  We read the book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", discussed the life cycle of the butterfly, and then digged in!

 We read this book again on Monday and did some more activities.  I printed these caterpillars from this blog.  It's a free download and I thought they were fun.  It includes the caterpillar that you cut out and staple to a ziplock baggie as well as pictures of all the food the caterpillar eats in the story.  You can "feed" the paper caterpillar.  We didn't get to do as much with this as I wanted to as we were having a child meltdown at the time.  Oh, well.  You do what you can.  But they'll be there when we read the book again.

 On Tuesday we read, "From Head to Toe", which is another cute story.  I laid out our paper roll that I bought at Ikea a while back and it was perfect.  The kids laid on top of it and I traced their bodies...from head to toe : ).  Then I let them paint them and when it dried I cut their bodies out.  Isaac LOVES looking at his.

 I forgot to mention earlier that we also painted tissue paper on Monday.  I drew out some butterflies, caterpillars, and a leaf and the kids painted them.  When they dried the paper hardens a little and it's easy to cut out and glue to a piece of paper.

 On Wednesday we read, "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?"  I made homemade puffy paint using shaving cream and white school glue.  I just guessed on the amounts, but it turned out great!  When it dried it was spongy but not messy or wet.  So cool.  I got the idea from this site, which is the same one that I got the "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" ideas.

Since we had the shaving cream out, I just let the kids have some fun with it on the table : ).

 Here are the finished cut-outs.  I'm so glad I put them on the wall!  Isaac keeps going up to his and standing in front of it. : ) I planned for us to measure them.  Haven't gotten to that yet...but like I said, there's always tomorrow!

On Thursday we read, "The Very Clumsy Click Beetle" and made our own click beetles with clothespins and paper.  I didn't get any pics of those, but the last link I put up there will lead you to it.  We were kind of rushed with that activity, so the kids didn't get into it as much as I thought they would. 

Last, but not least, we wrote a letter to Eric Carle and sent it to him!  His web site has lots of fun pictures, information, and even a video of him reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".  That's where we got his address.  We'll see what happens!

One activity I wanted to do was make a butterfly feeder.  We didn't get to that, but here is the link for how to do it.  Maybe some other time!  There are SO many activities you can do with Eric Carle books...it was hard to choose!  I'm not sure yet what we're doing next week, but I'm going to start working on it tomorrow.  I know in two weeks we're going to do a beach theme because September 15th we're finally going on vacation!  To the beach!  So I want the kids to experience the beach through some of our books the week before.  It'll be fun!  I've already got some art projects in mind.  I love making memories with my kiddos.

Hope these posts help you to make memories, too!

God bless~Stacey