Week 1 of preschool, apples, was a total hit for my son. So here we are continuing on (which we would anyways...haha) with week 2. And the theme this week is B is for Bugs. My son, being the boy that he is, loves bugs, so I thought that it would be a very fun theme for the letter b.
Books
Day 1: The Backyard Bug Book by Lauren Davidson
Day 2: Bugs A to Z by Caroline Lawton
Day 3: On Beyond Bugs by Tish Rabe
Day 4: It's Not Easy Being a Lazy Bug by Pragya Tomar
Day 5: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Fine Motor Activities
Day 1: What's Hiding in the Grass
Materials: What's hiding in the grass paper (found in worksheets at the bottom of page), green construction paper, scissors, and glue.
Instructions:
Create vertical strips to resemble grass in the green construction paper. And glue it to the edge of the worksheet paper.
Encourage your child to cut the strips one by one with safe scissors and supervision to reveal the caterpillar.
Objectives: Fine motor skills, scissor skills, and environmental elements recognition.
Tip: Talk to your child as they cut through the grass about how it simulates mowing the lawn, how the grass can house different plants/animals, etc.
Day 2: Pollen Transfer
Materials: Sturdy paper, scissors, tape, purple construction paper, yellow construction paper, glue, tongs and yellow pom poms.
Instructions:
Cut the sturdy paper into 1 inch wide strips, folding them to create a hexagon. Then taping them all together to create a honey comb.
Create a flower by cutting out the petals with the purple paper and gluing on a circle piece of the yellow paper.
Grab a pair of tongs and the yellow pom poms to act as the pollen. Set the pom poms in the center of the flower, and encourage your toddler to act as a bee, transferring the pollen into the honeycomb.
Objectives: Color recognition, shape recognition, fine motor skills, counting, and learning how honey is made.
Tip: Encourage your toddler to count the pom poms as they transfer them!
Day 3: Racing Snails
Materials: Snail cutouts (In worksheet printouts below), string, popsicle stick, and tape.
Instructions:
Tape together two of the snails to create a 3D snail around one end of the string.
Tape the other end to the popsicle sticks.
Encourage your child to race against you, twirling the string around your sticks to see who can reel in their snail the fastest.
Objectives: Fine motor skills
Day 4: Spider Web Tangle
Materials: Yarn/string, plastic spiders, a basket, and tongs.
Instructions:
String the yarn or string back and forth through the holes in the basket (or taped around the basket) to make it look like a spider web.
Add the spiders to the bottom of the basket.
Encourage your child to pick up the spiders with the tongs carefully through the webbing.
Objectives: Fine motor skills, gripping skills, and animal recognition.
Tips: If your child finds it too difficult, add less webbing/too easy do less webbing and allow them to use a clothespin or their hand to grip the spiders. Also encourage them to count the spiders as they capture them for counting practice.
Day 5: Eat the Fruit
Materials: Fruit strips (In the worksheet package at the bottom) and a hole puncher.
Instructions:
Encourage your toddler to follow the story of the hungry caterpillar, punching a hole in each fruit as you tell the story.
Objectives: Fine motor skills and ability to follow along with stories.
Tip: If you don't have the book, or would like to do more with the activity, add the alphabet onto each fruit (mixed up), and encourage your child to punch the holes in the ABC order.
Gross Motor Activities
Day 1: Squish the Bugs
Materials: Chalk
Instructions:
Draw different colored bugs on the ground.
Place a letter in the center of each bug.
Call out a letter and let your child find it, jumping over to it once confirmed to "squish" the bugs.
Objectives: Gross motor skills and letter recognition.
Day 2: Bop the Bugs
Materials: Balloons, marker, and a fly swatter.
Instructions:
Blow up a few balloons, drawing stripes, antennae, and faces on them to create bugs.
Allow your kid to use the fly swatter to try to hit the bugs to keep them in the air/
Objectives: Gross motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
Day 3: Bug Movement Cube
Materials: Cube cutout (In the worksheets found below), glue, tape, and scissors.
Instructions:
Cut out the cube from the worksheets and begin the form the cube by gluing down the small tabs and folding on the lines.
Have your child roll the dice and act out the movement with them.
Objectives: Gross motor skills, ability to follow directions, imitation, and imagination.
Day 4: Sticky Spider Web
Materials: Tape and balls of paper.
Instructions:
Make a spider web out of your tape the width of the door way. And scrunch up some old newspaper or regular paper.
Let your child throw the balls onto the sticky side of the tape, encouraging them to stick like a fly in a spider's web.
Objectives: Gross motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and food chain knowledge.
Tip: If your child is having a hard time getting the balls to stick by throwing them, let them just stick them on by hand.
Day 5: Explorer Checklist
Materials: Target Insect checklist (Something I found in the dollar section one day at Target), play binoculars, and a marker.
Instructions:
Have toddler walk around the backyard and front yard looking for all the items on the list, and check them off along the way.
Objectives: Gross motor skills, matching, and finding.
Food/Snack
Day 1: Strawberry Ladybugs
Ingredients: Strawberries and chocolate syrup.
Instructions:
Cut a strawberry in half, and then a triangle at the bigger half.
Add chocolate drops and a line in the middle on the strawberry.
Make a chocolate head and antennae
Day 2: Apple Butterfly
Ingredients: 7 Apple slices and peanut butter.
Instructions:
Place one apple slice as the body with the other six as part of the butterfly wings.
Add peanut butter to create a design and antennae.
Day 3: Cracker Ladybugs
Ingredients: Cracker, cream cheese, tomato, and turkey breast (sandwich meat)
Instructions:
Spread some cream cheese on the crackers.
Cut the tomato into little slivers to create wings and place on top of the crackers.
Take a couple slices of turkey, roll them up all together, and cut them into small rolls to make the head. Placing them on the cracker.
Day 4: Grape Bugs
Ingredients: Skewer and grapes.
Instructions:
Add grapes to a skewer.
Day 5: Celery Caterpillar
Ingredients: Celery, peanut butter, and grape.
Instructions:
Cut a celery stick in half.
Place some peanut butter in the middle.
Add the grape to one end for a head.
Sensory
Day 1: Digging for Bugs
Materials: Bugs, bin, dirt, tweezers, and cups.
Day 2: Slimey Bugs
Materials: Slime, bin, bugs, tweezers, and cups.
Day 3: Bug Hunt
Materials: Bug identification card (In worksheets below), bin, bugs, and dirt.
Day 4: Icy Bug Eggs
Materials: Frozen bugs, bin, colored water, colored salt, tongs, and spoons.
Day 5: Wiggly Snakes
Materials: 3 cups of corn starch, 1 cup of cocoa powder, water, bin, snakes, and rocks.
Other
Day 1: Static Butterfly
Materials: Cardboard, tissue paper, construction paper, scissors, googly eyes, balloon, and glue.
Instructions:
Start by cutting a square out of your cardboard, wings out of the tissue paper, and a body out of the construction paper.
Place the tissue paper on the cardboard (not glued) and glue down the body in the middle of the tissue paper, overlapping onto the cardboard.
Glue the googly eyes to the head.
Blow up the balloon, encouraging your child to rub it in their hair to give it charge.
Then have them hold it over the top of the butterfly and watch the wings raise and lower as they move the balloon closer and further.
Day 3: Insect Nature Art
Materials: Bug identification cards, flowers, rocks, leaves, sticks, bin, and twigs.
Instructions:
Put all of the materials in a bin.
Encourage your child to create bugs they've seen with the materials or make one of their own.
Day 4: Insect Bingo
Materials: Bug bingo cards (In worksheets below), scissors, and bingo marker (coins, crayons, etc.)
Instructions:
Cut out the bingo cards and call out card.
Select a bug off of the call out (or show by pointing) card and encourage your child to use their marker if they have a match until they have a row, having them yell "BINGO!"
Day 5: Caterpillar Life Cycle
Materials: Paper plate, fake leaves, rice, gummy worms, glue, cocoon drawing, and plastic butterfly.
Instructions:
My grandma was kind enough to make this for Christopher!
So she made a model plate already glued with the butterfly cycle. And the instructions were to read the Hungry Caterpillar book with my son and have him follow along with the development.
So it kicks off with the eggs (the rice on leaves), moves to the caterpillar (the gummy worm), then to the cocoon (drawing), and then finishes off with the adult (butterfly).