Caterpillar Season

It's caterpillar season, so I thought it was time for some caterpillar and butterfly activity stations.  To best use these stations, pick four to six activities.  Set them up for three or four weeks.  Start each class period with a mini-lesson or a story.  My favorite choices are Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar, Lois Ehlert's Waiting for Wings, and Gotta Go! Gotta Go!) by Sam Swope. 

Sequencing - Use the sequencing cards from DLTK.  You can put numbers and letters on the cards for students to put in order.  You can also label with words and have students put them in ABC order (a little tougher - this option isn't a good choice for kindergarten).

Caterpillar word building - Cut circles from felt.  Turn one into a caterpillar head and write lower case letters on the others.  Students can use a flannel board or a piece of felt as a background for building their words.  You can also use the letters from DLTK.  If you use these, laminate them and put magnets on the back.  Use a magnet board or cookie sheet as a background - or the end of a bookshelf or bookcart!
-Another word building idea -- Put capital letters on several caterpillar heads.  Then make the bodies with word endings.  Students can manipulate the pieces to make word families.  You can use this same method to make math fact families.  If you do math facts, find some ways to add selfchecking.  You can make shaped cuts or put a colored dot on the backs, or any other way that will help students know if they're right.

Food Sort - Print pictures of the foods the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate.  Encourage students to sort them.  They can sort in any way, including healthy/unhealthy foods, fruits/vegetables/other, by color or size, etc.

Match the butterfly to the caterpillar - As obvious as it sounds.  You can label both images with the butterfly name.  You could also leave them unlabeled and provide a field guide (more advanced).  If you choose this option, include a means of self-checking. 
A craft idea is to provide students with three or four sets of butterfly/caterpillar.  They can make a wheel match or a lift-the-flap paper.

Life Cycle pop-up - Make a four-box pop-up and have students put the butterfly stages of life on them in order.  An easier option is to prepare a wheel match of the stages and and students color them and assemble the wheels.

Field guides - provide a table just of butterfly field guides and other non-fiction butterfly books.  Include paper, pencils, and colored pencils for students who would like to draw or write what they see in the books.  This is for all ages - not just readers.  Try to find high quality photographs as they are more appealing to children than illustrations.  I use Butterflies and Moths (Golden Guide) and Nic Bishop Butterflies And Moths along with any other books on our shelves.

Caterpillar Board Game - Make a large drawing of a caterpillar and use the body segments for spaces on a game board.  You can use this for any kind of game. 
     -One option is the Fiction/Non-fiction call number card set in my Mo Willems post. 
     -You can also make a "Five a Day the Color Way" game to encourage healthy eating.  Find small photographs of many different fruits and vegetables (and label with their names - many will be unfamiliar!) from each of the color groups.  Color segments of the caterpillar to match the color groups and require students to collect one of each color to win.  You can also shuffle all the cards together and have the luck of the draw determine which color the player gets (tougher).
     -Have Fiction and Nonfiction caterpillar cards (fiction are obviously cartoons, nonfiction are photographs or realistic illustrations) that students must collect.  They need three of each before they can spin their cocoon!
     -You can also make a Candy-land style game and use the food items from The Very Hungry Caterpillar as the special cards.
Whichever you choose, make sure you laminate your games so they can be used over and over.

Collage - Both Very Hungry Caterpillar and Waiting for Wings use collage illustrations.  Provide pre-cut pieces of tissue or other colored paper, white construction paper backgrounds, and watered down glue in cups with paintbrushes.

There are also plenty of extra activities available online.  Our library has a felt and velcro set of Very Hungry Caterpillar that was purchased before my time.  A quick internet search shows many other options.

As always, if you have ideas, feel free to share in the comments.

Wild About Mo Willems

Mo Willems is one of the most popular children's authors today, and easily the most popular in my school library.  So this past fall we spent a month doing a Mo Willems author study.  We also incorporated call number activities in our author study to prepare for Dewey Decimal December.  I've loosely organized the unit activities by book.  I did this unit as activity stations with five to seven different activities set up around the room.

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems
- Make simple felt or cardstock pigeon puppets so students can reenact the book.  You can also make bus driver hats.  If you have a puppet theater this is a great time to get it out.
- Students write their own pigeon stories.  Start with "Don't let the pigeon..." or "The pigeon wants..."  At this station also include "How to Draw the Pigeon."
-"Who will drive the bus?" game.  My instructions can be found here at Google Docs.  Under the directions print a large drawing of a school bus with at least six windows.  The windows will be the gameboard spaces.  This game helps children recognize the difference between fiction and non-fiction call numbers.  You can find the game cards here for nonfiction and here for fiction.
-I also purchased Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus Game! from Amazon and the two pigeon puzzles: The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! Puzzle: 24 pc and Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! Puzzle: 24 pc.
-If you can find it, there's also a DVD of this story from Weston Woods that includes a video of a school visit with Mo Willems.  If you time it right, you can ask Mo questions and he will answer you and teach your students how to draw the pigeon.  (This is not the Mo Willems collection DVD on Amazon.)


Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed

-This is a great opportunity for talking about dressing for the weather.  You can make a mole rat paper doll and various clothing items.  Stick magnets on the back and use a small magnet board or cookie sheet.  You can also make background pictures of different situations and make appropriate outfits.
-Use clip art of clothing items to make a matching game.  On one of the pieces write an author's name and on the matching piece write the call number.







Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems

-Make your own puzzles.  There are plenty of coloring sheets available at pigeonpresents.com and other websites.  Draw lines for where to cut.  I like to cut them in plain vertical strips and put call numbers or words on the bottom that students need to put in order.


Mo's books are just great fun.  Use your imagination to make more stations.  If you have ideas or activities you've done, please add them in the comments.




Author studies are also a great time to encourage students to write.  We have a writing center set up for the duration of the unit, and I schedule it during National Novel Writing Month when we are also all working on our own novels.