Friday - Toddlers - Caterpillars & Butterflies

Holey Pom Poms - The kiddos LOVED this!  I just cut holes in the top of a yogurt container and gave the kiddos plenty of pom poms to poke through the holes.

  

Coffee Filter Butterfly - The kiddos colored the coffee filters.   

Heart Punch Butterflies -

A week on caterpillars & butterflies

Another great spring theme:  Caterpillars & Butterflies...  

Circle Caterpillars - To make these cute caterpillars, the kiddos laced circles onto a pipe cleaner, then added a face.

Caterpillar Life Cycle - We chatted about each part of the life cycle, so hopefully each kiddo can tell their family the stages of a caterpillar's life.  Egg, caterpillar, cocoon, and butterfly!

Band-Aid Butterflies -  I showed my three year olds how to create these cute butterflies by sticking a band-aid half way on, putting the gauze under then sticking the other half of the band-aid on. 

They each did one butterfly, then promptly decided caterpillars (just the band-aid) were much easier to make.  Ha!

Free Play - I found these sweepstake entry forms at Goodwill for cheap.  I pulled them out for the the kiddos today, along with mini clipboards.  The kiddos had a blast writing tickets for each other and what not.

Classroom Plant - Our plant is growing and growing.  This is the one that has been upstairs (left picture).  I was surprised it's not as tall as the downstairs one.

 

Clothes Pin Caterpillars - The kiddos picked their pom poms and I hot glued them on.

Cocoons - We decided our clothes pin caterpillars needed cocoons...
 We decorated tp rolls for our cocoons.  They're pretty fabulous.

 

Clothes Pin Caterpillars - Becoming Butterflies - The next day we took our clothes pin butterflies out of their cocoons and made wings for them.  I had some sparkly red tulle that we folded into a bow and taped in the middle.  This way the kiddos could clip on the wings and take them back off if they wanted.

 

Craft Stick Caterpillars - Finger prints...

 

Circle Time -  We tried out a cocoon (sleeping bag) today.  The kiddos loved it way more than I thought they would.  They took multiple turns, crawling in, changing into a butterfly and then bursting out and flying around the room.

Symmetry - Butterfly Wings - We talked about symmetry in nature (butterfly wings, animals and people).  Then we created symmetric wings by doing the old fold the paper in half trick with paint.  Simple, but cool.  We'll add butterfly body parts tomorrow.

Pretzel Butterflies - Using almond bark and M&Ms we created these yummy butterflies.  Sadly I didn't get a good close up picture and they've all been eaten.

Pencil Sharpener & Spiral Graph - Two kid favorites!  Both take a bit of practice to get the movement, but so fun once they've got it.

Sponge Butterflies - These turned out cute!

Our Symmetry Butterflies - Finished - We added a quick body to our butterflies.

 

Snack Sillies - In theory we were creating butterflies from our bagels.  But we also ended up with mustaches!

Jenga - The kiddos discovered (and LOVED) this game this afternoon.

Learning Station - Abc Tunnel (cocoon) Race

I gave the kiddos the sound of a letter, then they raced through the tunnel (cocoon) found the letter in the puzzle, showed it to me, then raced back through.  Once all the letters were done, they raced back through the cocoon to return each of the letters to the puzzle.

Learning Station - Lacing Caterpillars

Each kiddo had a very hungry caterpillar that they needed to help feed.  So they laced him through the leaf.

One kiddo wanted to try lacing her hungry caterpillar through the book.  It worked great and her caterpillar got to eat several yummy things!

Band-aid Butterflies

Continuing our Very Hungry Caterpillar theme this week, we created band-aid butterflies.  I got this idea from:   http://www.notimeforflashcards.com

What you need:

band aids
square gauze

I purchased both from the dollar store.

After attaching the band-aids, the kiddos can spread the wings, color them with markers and add antenna. 

Cute, quick and inexpensive.  Plus the kiddos LOVED being able to use band-aids!

Tp Butterflies

We made these simple butterflies today with tp rolls.

They turned our really cute!  We tied a string from them so the kiddos could hang them up at home and have them fly a bit.

Pictured here are my threes at work.  We were painting for another project, but we figured a bit of paint on the wings would be fancy.  I should have pulled out the glitter!

Egg Carton Caterpillars!

I love these, they're an oldy but a goody!

I did these today with my fours.  So very cute.  I think I'll do them tomorrow with my threes.

Balloon Very Hungry Caterpillar

I created a balloon version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to be strolling down the stairs to our preschool room.  I thought he turned out very cute!

TP Cocoons

I found these little caterpillars back in September in the dollar bin at Target and they were on clearance (score!) so I got them for thirty cents a piece!  Wahoo!

We decided our caterpillars needed to create cocoons so they could be butterflies.  So we pulled out TP tubes and a roll of first aid gauze and set to work.

As one of my fours was wrapping her cocoon she told me, "My caterpillar is already turning into a butterfly!"  Yep!

Now, I may get crafty and fashion some wings for these little guys using felt and velcro.  That would be a nice surprise for my kiddos!  I'll let you know...

Clothespin Caterpillars

We created simple, hungry caterpillars using:
1 clothes pin
4 pom poms
2 googly eyes
a small bit of pipe cleaner
hot glue (teacher only)

My fours LOVED these caterpillars.  As you can see, the caterpillars joined us for snack.  Those are carrot sticks in their mouths.  They also ate gold fish and tried to eat our bowls.  "Oh no caterpillar.  Don't eat that!  You'll get a tummy-ach!"

Caterpillar Life Cycle

This week we are learning from Eric Carle's:
 
Today for science, we talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar.  Utilizing the book the kiddos (my fours) were able to tell me each of the steps, then we created our own life cycle wheel:

1. A little egg on a leaf.
We used green craft foam and a small white bean.

2. A very hungry caterpillar.
We used pom poms.

3. A cocoon.
We used a cottonball.  Some of the kiddos colored it brown with a marker.

4. A beautiful butterfly!
We used a piece of yellow construction paper that the kiddos colored.