Caterpillar Craziness !

Caterpillar Craziness has taken over my life!!!

   With the arrival of our caterpillars last week (we received 5 Painted Lady caterpillars through Insect Lore), that is all I hear about—at school and at home!

   But no biggie, I enjoy my caterpillar unit every year! And this year, Pinterest has opened a whole wide world of new art ideas for a Caterpillar to Butterfly unit study!

   We have done some pretty neat art activities on caterpillars!

   Since Earth Day we have been collecting things to recycle and I decided it was time to teach my munchkins how to reuse some of the materials in our recycle bin in our art center!

   On Monday, I grabbed some fun neon Biocolor paint and had them use the plastic bottles as stampers to create circles to make caterpillars. (It was an idea that stemmed off of this Pinterest idea that I did with my munchkin the past weekend).

                                                        As many of my preschool munchkins are interested in writing words, I placed sheets of paper with the word Caterpillar on it and encouraged them to write it on their paper. 

   We added some wiggly eyes and legs once the paint was dry and we ended up with an awesome Caterpillar!  

   Aren’t they super adorable? I love that they really took their time in making them and didn’t go wildly crazy with stamping/painting, which I am sure they were really tempted to do!

   On Tuesday, I placed some popsicle sticks, pom poms and glue at the art table during morning centers and encouraged them to make caterpillars.

  Then today I read the book “Ten Little Caterpillars” and I taped green bulletin board paper on the art table (which I later cut it into a huge leaf shape). I placed some bottles tops from our recycle bin along with some glue and again encouraged them to make caterpillars.

   Today, we watched with amazement as three of the caterpillars were getting ready to form or were forming their chrysalises! (The final two were making their chrysalis as I was cleaning up after dismissal.) 

I LOVE the looks on their faces!

After reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar two different times this week, I had my preschool munchkins work on a story extension and had them draw pictures of some of the foods that the caterpillar ate in the story. For the most part, they drew things that were in the story and a few of them added in their own foods! 

 Talk about A LOT of caterpillar business going on!

   Now that all five of our caterpillars have made their chrysalis, we will focus on the steps in the Life Cycle of a Butterfly (which many of them know hands down) for the remainder of the week and wait anxiously until Painted Lady Butterflies appear in our Butterfly House!