Hungry Caterpillar Week @ Messy Play

Oops... just realised that I haven't finished posting about the group messy play sessions I ran in the summer. The next theme I chose was The Very Hungry Caterpillar so that we could cover food, leaves, caterpillars & butterfly's. In the sensory box I popped lots of popcorn, we do have a popcorn maker which made this quite easy, I think I ended up using approx 300g of corn. I then raided our toy kitchen to find all the plastic food that is mentioned in the book & added some scoops & spoons. 

This box was very popular with all the kids, we kept it made up at home the popcorn kept well & still smelt delicious 2  weeks later (though I wouldn't recommend eating any that old, it was OK to play with). 

This week instead painting on the floor I moved it up on to a table so that they could create individual paintings. I was aiming for symmetry butterfly's & sponge circles to make caterpillars. Well the kids had their own ideas and were happy to paint freely, the glitter went down well :-) Joseph (4.5) wanted to make a butterfly so I drew out the shape on half the paper to help him (bottom left pic).

For some floor art I taped some black paper down for chalking. I did have more paper to hand in case they filled it up, but the chalk rubbed away by hand so their was no need. I must remember to do this in the kitchen for the boys on a rainy day!

Using left over coloured pasta from the previous week we made some caterpillars, with pipe cleaners & eyes. This is great for little ones that struggle to thread on to string.

 For the other areas we had:

• Ball pool
• Leaf pool - Selection of leaves and pine cones. I used lots of different leaves including bay & mint to add some scent.
• Button & cotton real threading - which created some nice caterpillars

As usual we had a baby / quiet area, which included the book & a butterfly toy.

At the end of the session I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

x Jo x

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Valentines Toilet Roll Butterflys

Continuing with our letter B activity's, we decided to make some toilet roll butterfly's. We were inspired by several ideas that I had pinned, like this bee, this caterpillar, & this butterfly.

While Joseph (4) was out on an errand with Daddy, Daniel (2.5) painted 2 toilet roll tubes with our red glitter paint. With the first one he left several bits unpainted so I touched these up for him, then on the second one he spent ages making sure it was all covered. Next I cut out 2 sets of heart shaped wings from pink card, I used some scrap paper to make a template, so I could fold it & get a symmetrical shape.

Daniel then used our heart shaped pastry/cookie cutters that we used with our valentines play dough last week, to print heart shapes on to the wings. He was enjoying the painting so much that he also ended up making 2 cards!

The next day we all assembled the butterfly's, we used double sided tape to stick the wings on & made some antennae with a silver pipe cleaner then added some eyes (always a favourite). To decorate, I put out some shiny valentines confetti, and we also added some buttons from my stash to continue the B theme.

Both boys enjoyed making there butterfly's, which (once dry) did several laps around the kitchen before landing among our heart display wall.

x Jo x