The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 Just a quick post to share how much Squish and I love the Very Hungry Caterpillar series of books. We read a lot, but she always comes back to these and her face lights up as she turns the pages.

I have always loved Eric Carle and no matter what year level I was teaching I would always do a unit on his books with my class during library. For the littlies it would just be from a pure story point of view, for the older classes, we looked at how his illustrations were crafted and used in the stories (Hello, Red Fox is amazing!).

There is so much vocab in the original story, from days of the week and counting, to common fruits and other foods. Throw in a bit of science with the life cycle of a butterfly and you have such a rich learning opportunity outside the fun of the story itself. Because it is so great for vocab I even had a copy in German (Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt) when I was teaching German classes.

The Touch and Feel Playbook was fabulous for tummy time. Putting the book flat on the floor in front of her gave her something to do with her hands, standing it up in front of her encouraged her to lift her head.

The Where is book and the counting book are recent additions to our collection, and Squish loves lifting the flaps on each page to look for the Caterpillar and counting the animals on each page - well, I count, she watches :)

I had planned to do a Totoro cake for her 1st birthday, to round out the Baby Shower theme, but now I am thinking it might have to be a Very Hungry Caterpillar!