Mom & Me Book Club: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. unfortunately, I was not good about getting a lot of pictures this time. whoops.

Gathering Activity:  

For a gathering activity we let the kids play with pattern blocks and make caterpillars, while waiting for everyone else to arrive.

Show & Tell: 

Each child brought an item related to the book  for show and tell. They stood up in front of everyone, said their name, showed everyone what they brought and told the group about it. 

Circle Time: 

During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. We then sang the "Days of the week" song.  Then we read the book, "The Very hungry Caterpillar."

Activity:

After reading the book we did a sequencing activity. We passed out different props and toys of the different foods from the book to each child and let them try to line up in order of the book. 

Craft:  

For our craft we made caterpillar/butterfly life cycles. The kids got to make the 4 different sections. First they drew a leaf and glued a button on for the egg.  For the caterpillar we used craft pom pom balls of different colors, googly eyes and pipe cleaner antennas. They drew the cocoon, and for the butterfly we used colored tissue paper and miniature clothes pins.

 

Activity:

For our activity we played a game, sort of a mix between musical chairs and a cake walk. We printed out different food from the book and placed them in a circle on the floor. We played music and let the kids walk around in a circle, stopped the music, called out a food and figured out who was on that one, they were then out of the game and we continued from there.

Snacks:

For treats and snacks we tried to have all the foods from the book. Apples, pears, oranges, plums, chocolate cake, cheese, salami, cherry pie, caterpillar cupcakes and so on. 

Mom & Me Book Club: Duck! Rabbit!

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "Duck! Rabbit!" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

Gathering Activity:  

For our gathering activity we gathered together a bunch of books that had rabbits in them or ducks in them and let the kids and mommies read stories together as we waited for others to arrive.

Show & Tell: 

Each child brought an item related to the book  for show and tell. They stood up in front of everyone, said their name, showed everyone what they brought and told the group about it. For those that forgot their show and tell we had them share their favorite color.   

Circle Time: During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. We then sang the song "Little Bunny Foo Foo" and used a little rabbit finger puppet for the parts with the bunny. Then we read the book, "Duck! Rabbit!"   

Activity:

After reading the book, we talked about how we can look at things and we can sometimes see two different things. We looked at several different illusion pictures and let the kids tell us what they saw. (pictures like, the old woman/young woman, candlestick/faces and so on.) 

Activity:

After looking at the different illusion pictures we let the kids create their own illusions or animals using pipe cleaners and pom poms. They got to show everyone what they made and have people guess what they were. Got the idea from the mommy and me website here. 

Activity: 

We played a game called, "live duck, sleeping duck, dead duck." (normally this game is played with cows, but we changed it for this book.) We shouted out one of the three, and the kids had to act it out. Live duck waddles around the room and quacks, sleeping duck, lays on the ground pretending to be asleep and dead duck lays on their back with their feet up and tongue out. In this game generally the last person to change to the called out duck is out, but we just let everyone stay in and played over and over and over.

 

Craft:  

For our craft we made Duck/Rabbit puppets. One side of the puppet is a duck and the other side is a rabbit. on the duck side you glue on feathers, googly eye and color in the rest of the duck. On the rabbit side you glue on a pom pom for the tail, googly eye and color in the rest of the features. We got the idea from here. 

 

Snacks:

For treats and snacks candy ducks, candy/pretzel ducks and rabbits that we saw here. We also had bread and rolls, bunny marshmallows, fruit and a tray of "rabbit food" veggies and many other yummy treats.

 

Mom & Me Book Club: "10 Apples Up On Top"

We started hosting a Mom & Me book club after discovering this Mommy & Me Book Club website. They have such great ideas! We meet every other week for our book club and we follow the same general pattern of circle-time, crafts, and activities as they do on the website. For this weeks Mom & Me Book club we picked the book, "Ten Apples Up On Top" by Theo. LeSieg AKA Dr. Seuss.

Gathering Activity:  

For our gathering activity we did an apple picking activity. We printed out images of trees. We Got red colored craft pom poms. And using clothes pins, the kids got to "pick" the apples from the tree and place it in a "basket." (a cup) After they mastered the skill we handed out more colored pom poms and the kids got to continue picking apples and sort them by color into the different cups. We Got the idea from here. We got the tree image from here. 

Circle Time:

During circle time we sang, "here we are together at Mommy & Me" and we sang through every child's name in attendance. Then we sang the "ABC's." Next we counted from 1-10 and back again from 10-1. Then we sang to the tune of 10 little Indians, "one little two little three little apples." Then we read the book, "10 Apples Up On Top."  We ended circle time by singing, "shake my sillies out" with the last line being, "tip toe my sillies out" as we tip toed over to the table for a craft.

Craft:

For our craft we made Apples up on top posters. We pre-cut out 10 apples for each child with the numbers 1-10 on them. Gave each child a long strip of butcher paper that had a large oval at the bottom. They first colored in their face in the oval and then glued on the apples in order from 1-10. We got the idea from here. 

 Activity:

For our activity we pre-made 10 little apple shaped bean bags. We got the idea here. We let each child take a turn to see how many apples they could stack on top of their heads. And had a good time watching everyone try and see them fall. 

 

Then after everyone had a turn we gave each child one apple bean bag to place on their heads. We went though the events in the book and let the children try to keep their apples up on top while doing the following things:

                                             -Walking across the room

                                             -Jump roping (hoping)

                                             -tiptoe across the power line

                                             -Pretending to skate around the room

                                             -pretending to hop while drinking milk

 Then we had them try to keep them up on top while avoiding us parents acting as the "Mop" the "Tennis Racket" and the "Birds"

Last, we couldn't resist laying out all the bean bag apples and letting the kids get their photos laying down underneath them as if they were on their heads. 

Show & Tell:

Each child also brings an item related to the book (if they can) for show and tell. They stand up in front of everyone, say their name, show what they brought and tell the group why is is related to the book or why it is special to them.

Snack:

For snacks we had all sorts of fun apple themed treats. We had two different apple desserts. We had apples and peanut butter. We had dried apples and apple jacks. We had milk, like they did in the book. We had also had angry bird crackers (like the angry birds in the book who keep trying to steal the apples.) We also had some veggies.