The Very Hungry Caterpillar
We began our All Creatures Great and Small topic with a colourful but very hungry caterpillar. On small world, we sequenced the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Oral retelling a story is important for our reading and writing development.
We wrote a list of the foods the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate - it was a very long list! Next, we wrote an independent sentence, then edited it to write a more interesting sentence. Finally, we wrote a sequence of sentences to create our own Very Hungry Caterpillar stories.
In role play, we were scientists identifying, drawing, classifying and labelling minibeasts. Most of our minibeasts were plastic, but we had some real-life caterpillars too. We observed and recorded the changes as our caterpillars formed a chrysalis and then emerged as butterflies.
We created our own paper plate butterfly lifecycles.
On our creative table, we printed caterpillars with marshmallows, then larger ones with balloons. We looked closely at the Eric Carle image of the caterpillar, to add details including a face, multicoloured hairs on his back, legs and antennae. Then, we painted fruits for our caterpillars to munch their way through.
Our Bears classroom crawled with caterpillars - threaded pastel leaves with bead caterpillars, paper chain caterpillars, playdough caterpillars, and caterpillars and cocoons made with cubes and construction materials.
On the practical table, we created caterpillar salads from cucumber, tomato, pepper, spinach and raisins. We washed and cut the foods, before arranging the salad on our plate in a caterpillar style. Finally, we moved to the carpet for a picnic to munch through our caterpillar salad.
While we waited for our caterpillars to emerge as butterflies, the Bears were busy creating caterpillars, minibeasts and butterflies around the classroom.
We created some art and craft butterflies to decorate the classroom. We coloured coffee filters with washable pens, then added water with a pipette to make the colours bleed and blend. When they were dry, we folded each coffee filter back and forth to create wings and attached them with a pipe cleaner, curling the ends to make antennae.
Next, some fold and print symmetrical butterflies to hang over our carpet area. We also created sun catcher butterflies with tissue paper, bubble wrap, a lolly stick and some pipe cleaner antennae. Our butterflies look wonderful in our classroom windows.
Meanwhile, we have been busy gardeners caring for our fruits, vegetables and flowers. Look, we have beans!
What an exciting summer term so far! First sports day, then a trip to Barleylands Farm.
Next time, our new creatures are not small at all. In fact, they are rather enormous and loud. Watch out!