This is a LOVEly way to brush up on the gross motor skills (all puns intended!).
Prepare:
Different coloured paper hearts
Clear sticky backed plastic
Heart manipulatives (mine are soft stickers)
Brushes or clubs or hockey sticks of golf clubs or whatever you can use to move the manipulatives on the hearts
The kids always love these brushing activities. I stuck the paper hearts on the floor with sticky backed plastic. It makes the surface smooth for the brushes as there are no edges. The kids lined up on the floor to wait for their turn and to cheer their classmates on.
We named the different colours and then I asked the kids to come two at a time to brush one small heart on it’s respective big heart. The kids did a great job with using the big brush to move the small hearts one at a time on the big heart.
Afterwards the kids had great fun making up their own games with the hearts on the floor – I love it when the imagination runs wild! ❤
On the Friday of our week of the Very Hungry Caterpillar 50 years anniversary celebration, we asked all families to bring a snack item from the story to share. I prepared a letter with all the food items asking all families to bring at least one. As we see the parents every day we were able to talk with them to plan and managed to cover almost all of the food items and had a fantastic snack! Many of our fussy eaters tried lots of new fruits without even remembering to not like them 😀 The kids enjoyed seeing the story come to life so much it was just amazing!
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar we made a classroom display of the story. I made the sun and the moon and “In the light of the moon a little egg lay on a leaf…”. The rest of the items for the story we made together with the class.
The Caterpillar
You need:
Paper plates
Green and red paint
White paper to write the weekdays on
Black and white copies of all the foods in the story
Eyes and antennas from purple, yellow and green paper
We painted seven of the paper plates green and one red. I asked my preschool 2 students (all of them 4 yrs old or almost 4 at this time) to write the names of the weekdays to white paper from an example. For some of the kids I traced the name of the weekday with pencil and asked them to trace it with a marker. The weekdays were then glued on the paper plates.
There was enough food items to ask the whole class to colour at least one. When the paper plates were dry we all sat together and started glueing the foods on to the plates according to the story. I was amazed how well the children remembered all the foods the caterpillar ate each day and how many of them. Great sequencing!
The Butterfly
You need:
Rounded strips from an A3 sized paper in three different lengths
Markers
Honeycomb paper for the body and head
Pipe cleaner for legs and antennas
I cut the strips of paper free hand from A3 paper. The round top is about 8-10cm and the bottom part that attaches to the butterfly is about 5-7cm. The longest was the whole long length of the A3 and the other two sizes about 10-12cm shorter.
I gave each child in the class a strip and asked them to colour it with their favourite colours and as colourful as they possibly can. We did have the butterfly from the story out for an example at all times. This was actually a good in between activity whilst the kids were finishing lunch, going to the bathroom and then to play. I would invite them over to a table to make one of the strips before they went to play or in between playing, so it was a very free flow activity the kids greatly enjoyed.
I prepared the body and glued on the strips for the wings trying to achieve the same shape as in the illustration in the book. I cut a piece of card in the same shape as the body and it was easy to glue on the strips in a fan shape and the honeycomb body onto it.
Hint: if you pull a round pencil along the end of the strip it curls a bit 😉
Last year the Very Hungry Caterpillar by the amazing Eric Carle turned 50 years! During my stint as a preschool teacher the book has been a steady class favourite through all this time. With the Very Hungry Caterpillar we learn the weekdays, counting, food items, shapes, colours and most of all can have and make an endless amount of fun activities and crafts.
Here links to some of the fun stuff we’ve done recently:
Blowing paint around is great fun and can be used for all kinds of artwork! Here’s a few examples of what we’ve done in our class.
Prepare:
Practise blowing with a straw. Most kids will have used a straw at some point, but they are used to a sucking action with it. Before doing the crafts and involving paints (especially with the 2-3 year olds) we practised how to blow into a straw. I gave the kids a straw and a ping pong ball and asked them to practise blowing the ball to a dedicated area. We also made some rockets to blow up in the air (super fun activity!). After practising and ensuring we know the difference between blowing and sucking, we moved on to the craft.
You need:
A straw for each child (paper ones if you have, for the nature)
Pipettes or a large paint brush
A4 Card
Paints: I had poster paint which I diluted with water. Watercolours would do fine as well, but since our background paper in this was black, poster paints show on it better.
Give each child a straw and a paper and place all your materials on the table. Help the children choose their paints and use the pipettes as too much paint is difficult to blow. You get best results by putting a few wet drops, creating a small puddle in the middle of the paper. The paint is easy to blow from that. If you don’t have pipettes, you can also use a thick brush to drop the water on the paper with. Then give the children their straw and ask them to blow the paint in any direction they want.
In this activity/craft we wanted to make some fireworks to celebrate the New Year! The activity itself was almost as explosive as the fireworks would be. For extra glamour and shine, add glitter whilst the paint is still wet.
For the peacock version we had white background paper and used watercolours:
White paper
Watercolours
Two card circles in different sizes for head and body (our 3-4 year olds cut their own)
Beak
Feathers
Googly eyes
Same as above but the objective of the blow art was to make the gorgeous tail of a peacock! When the painting is dry, glue on the body, head, beak, eyes and feathers for wings.
Askarteluideoita lapsille päiväkodissa, lapsiryhmissä ja kotona 