The Very Busy Big Kids!

Oh Eric Carle, you sure have quite the collection of work! So many books, so little time…

Over the past month, the Big Kids and I have somehow managed to cover over six of Eric Carle’s beautifully designed and magical storybooks, each with corresponding games, lessons, artwork and field trips! And I say over six, because even when we aren’t in Big Kid’s Club, we still find ourselves drawn to his stories and reading his books on a constant basis.

This month we officially covered:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 5 Began with a Buddings favourite, Little Cloud. The story is about a little cloud, much smaller than all his other cloud friends, who is drifting across the sky. But unlike his friends who are simply just floating, this little cloud is having so much fun along the way! He’s checking out the views, he is changing shapes and transforming into airplanes, sheep and even turns into a silly little clown wearing a hat! The kids and I needed to check this out for ourselves. We ran over to the window…looked up…but alas, no clouds to be seen! Seriously, this must have been the only cloud-free day in Vancouver!

No problem though! We decided just to make our own clouds. We made clouds out of felt, clouds out of shaving foam, and we even made our own clouds in a jar!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 6 Some tortoises can be so silly! Eric Carle’s The Foolish Tortoise, is about a curious little tortoise that is tired of carrying his heavy shell around. I asked the kids if they thought it would be a good idea for the tortoise to take of his shell so he could run faster, and most of them thought it would be a good idea. But oh no, turned out not to be such a good idea after all! Once he crawled out of his shell, all kinds of animals tried to snatch him up! Thankfully he was able to return to his shell and once again feel safe and cozy in his own body. We ended up talking about how we are all different and all have different bodies and that we are all special and unique and perfect in our own way!

We also decided we could make our own tortoises, with shells, and have a tortoise race to prove that no shell was going to hold us back! In the style of Eric Carle, we created out own foolish tortoises…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 7 No Big Kids Club is complete without a field trip or two! After reading A House For Hermit Crab and talking all about tortoises, chameleons, caterpillars and fish in the past few weeks, a trip to Aquariums West seemed in order. We took the old #17 bus downtown to Beatty and Cambie and made our way up… or should I say down… the lengthy staircase at Aquariums West! (Sorry Isa!) Inside we saw all kinds of animals and insects: fish, frogs, bunnies and snakes… they’ve got it all. Sylvie and Emily liked the giant, I mean ENORMOUS brown frog the best, while Mattis and Gracie preferred the hamsters.

We ate our snack outside at the Terry Fox Memorial by BC Place and the kids and I raced around and climbed the huge steal letters and practiced our jumps. Isa, the saint with the injured knee, kept a watchful eye on not only us, but our precious grubs we bought for our Gecko at Buddings. I’m sure we had a dozen when we left, but when we got back I only counted 11… Isa??

 

 

 

 

 

Week 8 and 9 We read The Very Busy Spider and The Grouchy Ladybug, both Eric Carle classics! The Very Busy Spider is about a spider who has no time to talk or play with her friends, she is way too busy spinning her web so she can catch something for dinner. The kids loved this book! All the pages were textured so they all patiently took turns feeling the silky web. Afterwards we made our own spiders and spiderwebs, so the kids realized just how busy that spider was!

In The Grouchy Ladybug, a little tiny ladybug wakes up in a BAD MOOD! And I mean GROUCHY! It’s breakfast time, but this ladybug is not about to share any aphids with his other ladybug friend. In fact, he challenges her to a fight! When his friend agrees, he appears to get a little afraid and ends up saying “well you’re not big enough”, and for the rest of the day he looks for someone bigger to fight… until he meets a gigantic whale that, well lets just say, knocks some sense into him.

The kids and I talked about all the things that make us feel grumpy sometimes, and then came up with a list of things we could do instead of challenging our friends to a fight. “We could share” said Sylvie, Arianna nodded in agreement! Gracie said we could “smile.” Great suggestions if you ask me! We spent the rest of the day making our own ladybugs and playing a ladybug board game…

 

Week 10 Can you believe it, 10 weeks have gone by already! This season of Big Kids Club will be wrapping up by the end of the month. New clubs with new adventures lie ahead, so exciting! Almost as exciting as the GIANT book I brought into Big Kids Club last week! Seriously, if you want to have your kids actively engaged in something, buy a giant book!

Eric Carle’s The Tiny Seed is about a little seed blowing along in the wind with all the other bigger seeds. Along the way, some of the bigger seeds float way up into mountains and freeze, some are too heavy and drop into the ocean and drown, some even get eaten by birds and mice! But the tiny seed just floats along and eventually lands in a nice plot of soil. It turns out that this very tiny seeds, given the right conditions, will grow into the most beautiful, humongous, flower the world has ever seen!

In the spirit of the book, we investigated and sampled a variety of seeds… sesame, poppy, pumpkin and sunflower. Sunflower were the favourite… maybe because they were salted, but who really knows?! Check out our beautiful hand crafted flowers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks so much for reading this lengthy blog post, hopefully some of you made it through the whole thing! The kids and I just covered so much ground these past few weeks and I was dying to share it with all of you!

We still have a few classes left before the season ends, and next week we’re headed to the library in search of some more Eric Carle gems. Hope to see you then!

Christa