Butterfly week: Tattoos and Action Figures

You know what's great? Butterfly action figures.

 

Seriously, these things are big enough to pick up a G.I. Joe and fly off with him.

 

I found these at the Dallas Arboretum gift shop today. Why is it so hard to spell arboretum? It always takes me several tries.

 

I guess they aren't technically action figures, but whatever.

 

What's better than action figures? Tattoos! 

The Shark got the red one (upper right in the picture) on his hand. Then we had to take it off so he would stop shrieking. Good times.

I got the one with the flower (bottom left). It kept scaring me, because I would see it out of the corner of my eye and think that there was a bug on my arm.

The most awesome Very Hungry Caterpillar video

This video is an animated version of Eric Carle's book, the Very Hungry Caterpillar. It's beautifully done, funny, and true to the book.

And it's ten minutes long. TEN MINUTES! While your little one watches it, you could flip though a magazine, or go to the bathroom by yourself!

Here's the link, which Youtube won't let me embed for some reason.

Like I said: awesome.

Butterfly Week for babies

Lest you think  we've been neglecting the Bear during butterfly week, I wanted to show you our butterfly week baby toys:

I didn't actually buy any of these specifically for this week, since I'm totally flying by the seat of my pants and doing everything at the last minute, but I have nothing against getting them out of the toybox. I can do that.

But if you don't have it, and you want it, here's a link to the rattle on Amazon: Very Hungry Caterpillar Ring Rattle

This little book is cute. Both boys enjoy it. The Shark can almost read the words, and the Bear likes to see the colors.

Can you see how fat the pages are? Each page only has one word and one picture. Super cute.


Here's a link to the book (really inexpensive): The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Favorite Words

There's also a Very Hungry Caterpillar Soft Book, which we don't have, but feel free to send it on over.

The Bear, playing with his Fuzzy Bee book (see the butterfly?) and his butterfly rattle. The rattle is a Baby Einstein Bendy Ball and the book is Fuzzy Bee and Friends . This book is seriously awesome; and I don't care what the label says; it's totally machine washable.

He's honing in on the colors here. Or wondering what that worm is doing.

We don't have this Activity Caterpillar but ah lahke it ah loht.

It's kind of Eric Carle overload. He's got the caterpillar market cornered. Well, I guess there's some Baby Einstein too, but whatever. If you search Amazon for Very Hungry Caterpillar stuff, it's CRAZY. Jack in the box, puppets, toys, books. Nuts.

If you need to cleanse yourself from the commercialized Amazonness of this post, you might like this hair clip set from Etsy OH MY GOSH IT'S SO CUTE:

 I KNOW. The cuteness. Do you think the Bear would mind if I clipped this in his hair?

Butterfly Memory Game Cards

The Shark loves to play matching games, so I downloaded this butterfly memory game for our butterfly week. Click on the picture to get all three pages of cards from prekinders.com

My printer decided it wasn't going to print on cardstock today, so I printed them on white paper. I was worried the paper wouldn't stand up to my 2.5 yr old, so I used spray adhesive (because it was readily accessible, that's why) to mount the cards onto pretty cardstock. I have a drawer full of pretty papers, and look! This one has butterflies!

Extra credit: have white cardstock on hand. Print cool butterfly-themed pattern on the back of the cards so that you don't have to go the spray-adhesive route.

This is a lot of butterflies. The Shark likes finding the matches; he isn't quite up to the memory game with this many cards. We play with 8-12 cards for best results.

I was going to put the cards in a ziploc bag, but I found this balsa wood container in the paper drawer. It closes with the string and button. It had a price tag on the back that said $2.99, so I guess it wasn't expensive. It's pretty, though, and will keep the cards together.

Butterfly sandwiches

For butterfly week, I made butterfly sandwiches.
I don't have a butterfly cookie cutter, so I just freehanded it with a knife.
It would probably be cuter with all of the crusts cut off, but I hate wasting food.

Mmake the sandwich BEFORE you cut out the shape.

I added pretzel antennae, since I had pretzels.

Since we read the Very Hungry Caterpillar today, we had a slice of watermelon.

But I was thinking (after we ate them), wouldn't it be SO CUTE to make open face butterfly-shaped sandwiches (no top piece of bread), and decorate them to look like butterflies with pickles, tomato, pieces of cheese, dots of mustard, avocado...

Or you could do an open face with peanut butter, and use a squeeze bottle of jelly, or pieces of fruit. How cute would that be? Very cute, I say. And jelly comes all up in squeeze bottles these days, or so I hear.

I think I'll make a different variation on these for lunch tomorrow.

Extra credit:
Use food color spray to tint the bread in butterfly wing designs.
Or make your own rainbow colored bread for the butterfly.

I ate a butterfly sandwich, too.

make collages like Eric Carle

As you know, unless you live under a caterpillar-free rock, Eric Carle's books have gorgeous illustrations. Carle uses a multi-step collage process. This process is kid-friendly, and kids as young as kindergarten can produce some very sophisticated results using his method.

Here's a slideshow of Carle preparing his papers:

And another slideshow of him using those papers to make a collage:

Here's some written instructions by Carle on making collages:

Eric Carle Collage Making Instruction Sheet

Here's a FANTASTIC lesson by a teacher and her class as they make similar collages.

Go drag some tissue paper out of the gift-wrap box and get to it!

If you want more of Eric Carle, here's a link to other videos, including Carle making a mural: http://www.eric-carle.com/photogallery.html

Very Hungry Caterpillar coloring pages

I'm starting out our butterfly week with The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle.

Lest those of you with older kids despair, I will be including things as we go for older kids. Awesome things. You'll love them.

but first:


coloring page from the author's website at http://www.eric-carle.com/coloringpage.html

My 2.5 year old, aka "The Shark," loved this one. He was able to tell me the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar just from this coloring page.

It's a detailed page, which would make it great for kids a little older, but the Shark was not dissuaded, as you can see:

I found some more great coloring pages here: http://learningenglish-esl.blogspot.com/2010/07/very-hungry-caterpillar-colouring.html

These have a number, color, and fruit on each page.
Super cute and the Shark loved them.

I printed them by clicking on each one, dragging it to my desktop & then opening up in Preview to print.

I helped a little, yes. But we had fun.

One of the great things about Carle's book is that you can use it to teach art, science, counting, colors, nutrition, etc. I think that's why it has remained so popular for 40 years. 

Stay tuned for butterfly sandwiches!