The book titled “Ten Little Caterpillars” by Bill Martin Jr. is a wonderful book to use as an introduction to exploring the many different kinds of caterpillars and butterflies there are in the real world…
“Ten Little Caterpillars” is a beautifully illustrated book that takes you on an adventure of finding a different caterpillar on each page until you work your way through all ten caterpillars…
At the end of the book, the children can look through all the different caterpillars as well as the beautiful butterflies they change into. My students were extremely curious about each type of caterpillar and wanted to know the different caterpillar and butterfly names. After all, there are so many cool names such as the woolly bear caterpillar and the painted lady caterpillar…
In preparation of reading this book to my students, I made up a set of caterpillars out of craftsticks and pompoms. The children certainly could have made these for themselves but I wanted to use them as part of the story telling experience in circletime…
We read the book a second time only this time, we also counted ten caterpillars from our caterpillar jar…
We counted and compared our pretend caterpillars to the caterpillars that were in the book and found some similarities but mostly we found differences…
And we looked to see if we could form any patterns with our caterpillars…
And then I gave each child a caterpillar to keep as a story book token to bring home. The children carried their caterpillars around with them throughout the classroom day…
And used them as inspiration to draw caterpillars in their journals or simply kept them out for play…
Our 10 little caterpillars (plus the extras I made for play) were a simple and fun addition to our day. The children enjoyed using them for play and they made a great story book token to promote conversation about caterpillars at home too!
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That is a fun book. I just posted a set of butterfly learning stations and 2 great books that would be fun for your Preschoolers if your interested http://gidgetsbookshelf.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/butterfly-learning-stations/
Deborah, Where did you get the journals? do they have lines pages in them for writing too? Thanks for all of your ideas!
Robin
Hi Robin,
My journals are blank books as my students focus more on drawing than on writing in them and when they do write, we focus usually on just one word:) I bought my blank books at United Arts and Education which is a store located near me but you can see the link here as well. http://www.unitednow.com/product/999/blank-books.aspx?item=2937