Caterpillar Exchange

January 30, 2009 by beth Leave a Comment

Eric Carle is one of my very favorite children book authors. I love his vibrant illustrations and simple story lines that include a life lesson.

Carle’s books are timeless and great to use in the classroom, which is why I was so excited to find The Caterpillar Exchange, a website with dozens of ideas that have been submitted by teachers, parents and librarians for science, art, reading, and writing lessons. Even entire theme units!!

Here are a couple of the submissions:

We use many Eric Carle books (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, The Very Hungry Caterpillar) to teach a unit on writing pattern books in second grade. Almost all of his books have a pattern or repeating lines. First, the children read the books in groups of 3 and find the pattern or repeating lines in each book. We use Eric Carle books as touchstone texts that the children can grab at anytime to help them write their own pattern book. Some children do their own version Brown Bear, Brown Bear but change the things he sees, some children write a different version like Black Cat, Black Cat and some children write completely original pattern books. It is a great way for teachers to differentiate and for children to work at their own level. During Writers’ Workshop the rest of the year they can go back to writing pattern books as they finish other projects. Their pattern/repeating line books get more sophisticated as the year goes on.

Submitted by Courtenay Garver

After reading Pancakes, Pancakes! by Eric Carle and Pancakes For Breakfast by Tommie DePoala we make pancakes using the recipes from both books. The children measure, mix, and watch as the batter turns into pancakes. We discuss the changes that occur during this process. After we make pancakes using both recipes, the children do a taste test and graph the pancakes they liked the best. Then we compare and contrast the recipes. The children conclude this activity by writing letters to the author of their favorite pancake recipe.

Submitted by Serena Buckner

Find many more lesson ideas here!

Next Plan Idea:

Polar Bear Learning Activites

Have you read?

Cat Themed Learning Activities

I recently shared a bunch of dog-themed learning activities in honor of National Pet Month. Now it’s time for the cats (which are actually my favorite, shoutout to Baron and Haru!).

Homemade Heather has a great set of cat activity printable sheets including the life cycle of a cat, parts of a cat, a page kids can fill out about their cat and a little reading comprehension with a cat theme.

World of Printables has a super cute cat coloring page that asks you to color cats of different shapes in different colors and then count them. Like an I Spy, but with cats!

Speaking of shapes, give kids practice tracing basic shapes and writing the words for them (square, circle, oval, triangle, diamond, etc. there are 12 shapes in all) with these cat-themed printables from Tot Schooling. These would be good to laminate so you can use over and over while kids are learning about shapes.

Royal Baloo has a great printable cat pack that includes activities for toddlers up to third grade, so this is perfect if you’re homeschooling kids of different ages. There’s literacy and math activities in this pack, including shape tracing and matching for the little ones, beginning sounds and skip counting for pre-k kiddos and addition, multiplication, writing pages and more for older kids.

Fluffy Tots has a cute printable emergent reader on a cat theme, and Sunny Day Family has a super cute cat matching memory game you can print. Build a cat with the printable from PJs and Paint, or cut and fold a stretching cat with this activity from Krokotak.

1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1 has a cat unit study and printables for kids who are learning cursive writing. There are also three part cards about cats, a printable on scientific classification of cats and more.

Your Therapy Source shared this cute motor skill idea of using pipe cleaners as cat whiskers, which makes a fun quiet time activity or something kids can use in the car.

Take your love of cats on the go with this printable cat activity placemat from The Art Kit Blog. It includes a word search, maze, word scramble and some cats to color, tic tac toe boards and more.

Older kids can learn how to build Lego cats with these instructions from Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls.

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

Leave a Reply