Eric Carle Books

Over the course of three weeks we read three different Eric Carle Books: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Grouchy Ladybug and The Tiny Seed.

The first book we read was The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Before reading the story we asked our students to think about the foods that the caterpillar eats and whether or not the food he ate was healthy.

After reading we distributed these post-it notes with drawings of the foods the caterpillar ate drawn on them. We called on the students to determine whether or not the foods were healthy or not healthy, and they had to place them on the correct side.

The following day we created a class book. The students had to complete their page of the book by completing the sentence, "The caterpillar ate ___   _______." The students got to choose a food that the caterpillar ate and had to write the amount of that food that he ate. They also had to draw a picture illustrating their sentence.

The following day we took a picture walk of the book and we retold the story. We had a piece of chart paper with the days of the week written down, with the student's help the helped complete the chart by telling us what the caterpillar ate on that day.

Afterwards the students moved on to their workstations.

There are several games online inspired by this story!

The next day we talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar. After discussing the different stages the students had to illustrate the stages on a piece of paper that was folded up into four sections.

Before letting them work independently, we showed them these cards with the stages written down on them.

Completed Life Cycles of a Caterpillar

The following week we read the book The Grouchy Ladybug.

Throughout the week we discussed the story elements of the story.

The last Eric Carle book we read was The Tiny Seed.

The students wrote in their journals after we read the book about something they learned from the story.

The next day we watched a video on YouTube that read the story aloud to the class. The student's filled out this reader's response sheet and wrote about their favorite part of the story and whether or not they liked the story.

The last activity we did with The Tiny Seed was drawing and/or writing about the beginning, middle and end of the story.