So last night as I was sitting in bed browsing through some blogs I was thinking of some things to do with Little Bug today. I found a cute caterpillar craft and from there a whole list of ideas (of course all gathered from other people) got put on my list. It's amazing what you can do in 1 hour of time with a 2.5 year old. Each of the activities took at the most 10 minutes and we just moved right along from one thing to the next. It kept her attention for an hour. Then I knew she was done. And that is fine - I got an hour of time with her - just me and her - while my Little Monkey slept. And I know she enjoys it because she gets SOOO excited when I say we are going to do a craft, make a snack, etc.
So the first step was to turn off the TV which she did. I knew that if I wanted her full attention the TV had to be off! I usually keep it on for background noise but it was nice to just have some quiet!
Well anyways, the caterpillar craft got me thinking that we should do some things with the letter C. Like I've said before Little Bug can identify letters but I still want to do extra practice with them. I don't go in any particular order with the letter activities. Also as I've said before I just do random things. Hopefully I can become more organized. As a teacher I was very organized. As a stay at home mom - not so much. We just go with the flow around here with a lot of spontaneity.
Today we focused on the letter C and more specific - caterpillars. Some things we did today are:
* read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (on the computer). I have the book somewhere with all of my books from my classroom but didn't have time to find it!
* Made a caterpillar snack out of bananas, a grape, pretzels, and Nutella (you can never go wrong with Nutella!)
Little Bug spreading the Nutella on the bananas (she can't stand being sticky so I had to wipe her hands quite often!)
The finished product
Time to eat!
In the story you can see the life cycle of a butterfly. We looked up the life cycle online and then using a sticker story board I had Little Bug show the life cycle of a butterfly. Now the question is did she remember it? Well just about an hour and a half later I asked her about the life cycle. I started by telling her it starts out as an egg and then she was able to tell me the rest. She even told be about the chrysalis!
Then we made a caterpillar craft using pom-poms, a tongue depressor, wiggle eyes, and a straw. She did most of the craft herself but I did hot glue the wiggle eyes and antennae on so that they would stay put!
Here is the final product. I had Little Bug do 9 circles to fit each letter of her name. She started out doing a pattern but then she messed up the X circle and did another red. At first out went the pattern but now as I look at it she actually continued the pattern (ABCA)
This was the activity we did as we read the story. I read a part and had her show it on the story mat.
This was the final product from the pom-pom craft. Cute right?
We talked about the letter C and the sound it makes. Then Little Bug wrote a C. It's sideways but hey it's a start. We haven't really worked on writing letters yet. I mean she isn't even 3 yet.
But she did find the Letter C in the poem. Using a dry erase marker she highlighted each C. I had this flip chart from teaching that has a song for each letter and the song rhymes. She liked the letter scavenger hunt!
Well it was a fun morning. We actually have the very hungry caterpillar game so we may play that but after we get some lunch. And to top the letter C day off we are making corn dogs!
