The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Week 1
This week our residents joined us for our first Easy Peasy Pods session. A new project where we are working with our parent and child residents to encourage home learning and socialisation.
We started off by reading through the book as a group and then made caterpillars using paper plates and paint. The residents and their babies really enjoyed exploring the paint with their hands, creating our caterpillars. The residents were interacting with their children and encouraging them to vocalise their excitement.
Week 2
For our second Easy Peasy Pods session we welcomed Emma from the Wellington Children’s Centre, who came over with lots of information on weaning for our parent and child residents. She helped us to understand more about the benefits to weaning and to enjoy a healthy balanced diet. She also brought over a selection of sensory toys for the babies to enjoy.
After this interesting session we began looking at the different foods The Very Hungry Caterpillar enjoys in the book and used potatoes to create a painting by cutting patterns into them and using them for printing.
Week 3
This week with got our residents to make playdough, incorporating the fruit the caterpillar eats in the book. We got the residents to make the playdough using fruit and baby rice.
The residents and their children enjoyed getting very messy with this activity, creating edible playdough with different smells and textures refining their motor skills and encouraging sensory play.
Week 4
This week’s activity was to create tissue paper stained glass butterflies, we got the residents to create colourful butterflies like the one at the end of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We are looking forward to putting these up on the window in when it’s sunny creating a range of beautiful reflective colours.
Week 5
This week we have been working with our residents to create homemade sensory books.
We have read through the very hungry caterpillar again this week and seen all the different surfaces and textures the caterpillar comes across in the book. The residents have had a wide range of resources to use for making their book, including feathers, foam sheets, felt sheets, pipe cleaners, ribbons and different types of craft paper. They used these resources to create a range of different pages for their baby to enjoy.
Week 6
This week we got all colourful in the kitchen with rice and pasta. The adults did the cooking then mixed in the food colouring using colours of the butterfly that The Very Hungry Caterpillar turned into. Once it was cooled the little ones got stuck in, rubbing it through their fingers, tasting it, sprinkling it all over the floor and squishing it between their toes. This week was the last of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and we will be starting the next book “We’re Going on an Easter Egg Hunt”.
