Big Kids, Big Kids, What Do You See?

Wow! What a great kick off to the Fall Season! The Big Kids and I have been keeping ourselves busy studying the works of Eric Carle and creating beautiful artwork inspired by the man himself. So far we’ve been able to sink ourselves into a few of his classics including The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, 10 Little Rubber Ducks and Mister Seahorse, but with a collection of over 70 books, we’ve still got a ways to go!

 

Week 1 We started off the class by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and learning all about the life cycle of the butterfly. We now know that a butterfly begins as a tiny little egg, only the size of a pinhead, and out pops a tiny little caterpillar. The caterpillars only job is to eat and eat and eat, and the kids and I all decided that that would be a pretty fun job to have! After the caterpillar is finished eating and growing, he hangs himself upside down on a twig in a “J” shape and builds a chrysalis out of silk around himself, he will remain in this stage as a pupa for a period of 2 weeks up to a year… depending on the species. Finally, a beautiful butterfly emerges from the chrysalis and the cycle is complete!

We also learned a lot of interesting facts about butterflies; like how the Monarch flies all the way down to the same specific area in Mexico each winter, or how the Queen Alexandra Butterfly has a wing span of 27 cm! Did you know that butterflies taste with their feet?

Besides learning all these cool facts about butterflies, we actually painted a body for our mascot Carle and played a game where we had to throw a ton of food into his huge hungry mouth, which we then counted and sorted into food groups. We played this Very Hungry Caterpillar game for a very long time!!!

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Week 2 We dove into the classic Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Although our Big Kids knew this one off by heart, that certainly didn’t stop the fun! As we read the story each child got to shout out the name and colour of the felt animal they were holding and take turns putting it up on the giant felt board. We talked about all sorts of animals and played charades.

The highlight of the day would have to have been our group collaboration project where we created our very own version of the Brown Bear book ourselves! We collaged pictures of animals with construction and tissue paper and put together our own book tiltled Big Kids, Big Kids, What Do You See? Be sure to check it out next time you are in Buddings! Our artists are so proud! We ended our day with an Eric Carle board game titled Brown Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? We had to patiently take turns collecting pictures of various animals to see who could complete their list first. We ended up playing this game five times because it was so fun!

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Week 3 I know what your thinking: How could we make this class even more exciting?! Well let me tell you… with a field trip of course! Luckily we had the most beautiful, cool, sunny day as we trekked down to Charleston Park just a few blocks from Buddings. When we arrived, the kids ate their snacks and opened a secret package that happened to arrive at Buddings that very morning. Inside the mysterious package was another one of Eric Carle’s award-winning books, 10 Little Rubber Ducks. Based on real events, the story is about a crate of rubber ducks that went overboard during a storm while being transported across the ocean! When we finished our story, a note from the Captain fell out of the back of the book. His note asked us to go down to the shores and see if we could locate his 10 missing rubber ducks!

After vigorously searching all over the park, we somehow managed to find all the missing ducks! Not only that, we also stumbled upon a family of real live ducks including a mother, a father and 6 little ducklings! They swam right up to us in the nearby pond! We were all so excited!

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Week 4 We wrapped up the end of the month with a tale about the life of Mister Seahorse. Mister Seahorse has a very interesting life. Male seahorses have little pouches, like a kangaroo, on the front of their abdomens. The female seahorse lays her eggs in it and it is the male seahorse who carries the eggs around until they are ready to hatch. We learned a ton about seahorses like how they don’t have stomachs or teeth, and how some species can change the colour of their skin to blend into their environments. Their eyes work independently of each other and they are actually not very good at swimming, they use their prehensile tail to latch on to coral and rocks to prevent them from drifting away.

After studying the seahorse we decided we better take a look at some other interesting fish in the ocean. We watched a few little videos of the coolest looking fish we could find, sang our slippery fish song, and then set out to construct our very own aquarium.

In the style of Eric Carle, the kids collaged some cute little seahorses and fish, then used pipe cleaners to create seaweed. We added rocks and shells and some little plastic sea animals we found around Buddings. These kids demonstrated not only their amazing fine motor skills, but their creativity, commitment and team spirit. They sure know how to work together!

So that wraps up our first month of Carle Class and honestly, it really has been a ton of fun!! Each week we will continue to uncover another amazing book from Eric Carle’s creative imagination and we will continue collaborating, creating and celebrating the beauty and wonders of this amazing world we live in!