This past week turned out to be much more fun that I had originally planned! To a preschool child, insects are either "WOW" or "yucky", but much to my surprise, my class thought they were "WOW"! Lucky me! One of my all time MOST favorite books is . . . . . The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle So naturally we spent an entire day discussing not only the book but caterpillars too! Everyone had a great time making the very own hungry caterpillar. Balloons made the perfect round shape! The children used their fingers to make the antennas. They drew on their own noses and legs.  I think Eric Carle would be very proud, don't you? We also started making our "Name Caterpillars". This is one of my all time favorites. Each child counts the letters in their name and picks out that many circles. Next, they write each of the letters on a circle. Finally, we get to put it all together, add a head, some legs and . . . . . A close up view of Jon Brook's caterpillar. WOW, he has a long name! After our caterpillar day on Monday, we spent Tuesday talking about butterflies. It was really fun walking around the school fluttering like butterflies. We made beautiful butterflies by putting big blobs of paint on one side of our butterfly cutouts. Next we folded the paper and squished it. It was very messy We added a cute little thorax complete with an adorable little face and antennas. Wednesday was so much fun! We spent the entire day talking about bees! And yes, we "buzzed" the entire day! We also made the cutest little bumble bee ever! Everyone loved using the tiny paint brushes to paint on the stripes. Thursday was all about ladybugs and of course we had to read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. Again, this is one of our favorite books (to be honest, I am a HUGE Eric Carle fan!). Our ladybug was not quite as "grouchy". One student said, "she had already eaten her dinner and wasn't mean anymore!". I LOVE IT!   I found a number of great ideas for the using The Grouchy Ladybug on The Official Eric Carle Website. Check it out for more ideas. Because of a threat of severe weather, our school day was cut short on Thursday. (Remember, we are in Central, Alabama and severe weather usually means tornadoes!) Anyway . . . we spent what little time we did have reading and talking about Eric Carle's book The Very Lonely Firefly . Again, here are some more fun activities for The Very Lonely Firefly Friday was spent talking about insects and all their distinct characteristics. Each child made their very own personalized insects and decided if they would fly, hop or crawl. We also talked about what their insects liked to eat!  We also "at an insect"! We headed to the kitchen and put together a yummy insect out of good 'ole 'Nilla Wafers, pretzels, raisins and "I"cing! YUM! No one seemed to mind eating these insects! Thanks for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by next week - we will be talking about "birds"!