Monday, August 29, 2011

The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the letter C

This morning we started with the letter C while we ate our breakfast. We talked about the letter C and Kaitlyn named some words that had the c sound ( caterpillar, ice cream * close enough, cupcake) Then we got out some of our homemade fundough that we made the night before. This is my favorite recipes because it is super easy and doesn't involve cooking....and everyone who knows me knows I am not much of a domestic goddess in the kitchen...but I must say I have improved a bit over the past year. At least I am no longer trying to dice onions with an egg slicer...yes that actually happened. One of my many cooking endeavors that went terribly wrong. Anyway...here is the recipe:
1 Cup Flour
1/2 cup Salt
1/2 Cup Water
1 pkg of kool-aid ( for color and smell)

Mix all ingredients in a  bowl and mix with hands into one large dough ball. Put in an air tight container for the next day. I've found if you make it the night before it is far less sticky.

We used the fun dough to make the letter C on our Letter C Mat (Get your very own mat in the printables section on my blog)
I slid it into a plastic page protector to keep the surface fundough friendly, and so I can reuse the letter mat throughout the week.
I also had Kaitlyn trace the letter with her finger as well as use her pom pom's to outline the letter.
After some letter hunting ( playing I spy the letter C) we read the book
The Very Hungry Caterpillar By: Eric Carle
She helped me name the colors and count the fruit as we read the story.
When we finished we started our Art project for our ABC book
First I had precut several circles out of tissue paper in all colors. Then I had Kaitlyn glue them on to her 10X10 paper, naming the colors and counting as she went.
Then we started our Finger Salt painting, we will let this dry overnight so the salt crystals set with the paint.
I squeezed green and yellow paint onto Kaitlyn's paper. She took a few pinches of salt and Kosher salt onto her paper. Then she spread the paint around with her hands. After she was done with the green one we did a red one in the same way.
We will save both of these till Wednesday and finish our Letter C page for our ABC book then.


Next we read the Book One By:  Kathryn Otoshi
Which we got from the Public Library, a great resource for kids this age. Kaitlyn loves picking and choosing her own books and reading them each night. this story is all about colors and numbers. It is a great book for teaching the color names, what a number looks like and basic counting skills.

To reinforce the book we got started on our Colorful Caterpillar Cupcakes!
Kaitlyn helped me make the cupcakes in our Mixer. I had her count out the muffin wrappers and place them in the muffin tin. Perfect review and helps to teach her one to one number correspondence.
After the cupcake wrappers were filled with batter.  I sprinkled a few drops of food coloring into each cupcake (step 3). I had Kaitlyn stir them with a toothpick (Step 4) and then put them into the oven to bake! 
She was so excited when they came out all colorful!

We separated the cupcakes and sorted them into color groups for two cupcake projects.
The first project was our Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcake
We took all of the green cupcakes and one red one to make our Very Hungry Caterpillar
We didn't ice these because they were so colorful already. We used some crunchy Chinese noodles for his antennae and his legs. We used some round yellow candy sprinkle dots ( Target Cake dept. ) and some raisins for eyes. Kaitlyn was so proud of her Very Hungry Caterpillar!
Our second project was Sorting and icing all of the colorful cupcakes. Kaitlyn counted them and put them into groups, we reviewed all the skills that she learned today with this fun and yummy activity...Thank goodness we have  playdate this afternoon and we will have some help consuming these yummy cupcakes!
Join us Wednesday as we explore patternpillars, finish our Letter C page and make our very own Very Hungry Caterpillar necklace!








No comments:

Post a Comment