Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Family Book Club: Eric Carle Day Part 2

There are so many amazing Eric Carle books and accompanying activities that it couldn't be contained in a single post.  You could reference both this post and my Eric Carle Part 1 post and do Eric Carle week... or Eric Carle month!  Maybe focus on one book per day???




Our afternoon snack was brown bear themed... brown teddy grahams and gold goldfish crackers.  I looked for green frog gummies, but couldn't find them and no one seemed to mind. 


The chocolate teddy grahams would work well too.



 As they ate, we talked about AB patterns and ABB patterns and the boys created those.



For our craft, I printed off the Brown Bear memory game HERE and as we read the story aloud, the kids strung the cards along with beads onto their yarn to make a story sequencing necklace.


Luke immediately informed me that there was no white dog and Griffin was more into matching the cards onto the pictures in the book, but it was still fun.


The boys strung the pictures onto ribbon and Luke even added beads  They both remembered the order without us even having to read the book!









And of course we had to sing the Brown Bear song :)  


And in case you couldn't understand my giggly singing, here are the lyrics...

Brown bear, brown bear, turn around. 
Brown, bear, brown bear, touch the ground.
Brown bear, brown bear, reach up high.
Brown bear, brown hear, touch the sky.
Brown bear, brown bear, bend down low.
Brown bear, brown bear, touch your toe.

And if you want a video that will put ours to shame, have your kids watch this super cute girl rap the brown bear book.  My kids watched this AT LEAST a dozen times.  



Our last brown bear activity we completed after Griffin was in bed.  I gave the boys each a brown bear worksheet I found online where they had to write the color under the picture and then color the animals. 


Surprise, Surprise.  Mason wanted to do his own thing ;)  I wrote the words out for him and then he traced over them.




Luke worked independently and he even thought to number them in the correct order that they appear in the book.




Next we focused on the Mixed Up Chameleon.

I printed out this picture (I cropped out the text on the bottom before I printed) for each of the kids.


I took one piece of each of the colors of tissue paper in this package and cut it into thirds so each kid had a piece of every color.


They tore the tissue up and then glued them onto the sections of the chameleon.



Griffin only wanted to do the glue and she FREAKED when it was someone else's turn with the glue bottle. 


"I CAN'T HAVE ALL THE GLUE ALL THE TIME!!! OH, THE INJUSTICE!!!" 
#littlesisterproblems ;) hahaha


Mason wanted to do everything independently.  Every.  Thing.  And his turned out fabulous :)


Any guesses which one is Masons? :)


Next, each of the kids painted a paper plate with watercolors.



They covered their whole plate and we even tried out splatter painting.


While the plates dried, I drew and cut out a chameleon on three plain white plates. 


We popped the white plate on top of the painted plates and popped a brad through the middle.  When you spin the plate the chameleon changes colors!





And since we were talking about changing colors, we had to do the carnation/food coloring experiment as well.

We put food coloring in four glasses of water...




And then popped in the white carnations.  


I didn't take into consideration how long the flowers were going to take to change color, so unfortunately they hadn't changed much by the time I was working on this post.  If you decide to do this, be prepared to wait a day or so for them to change.

Up next we read The Grouchy Ladybug while the kids ate the cutest snack ever.



It was adorable until they all wanted to lick the icing off and all of their mouths turned black :)  I think next time I'd just sharpie dots onto the wrapper.

I made and printed these little ladybug graphs.  The boys each rolled a dice 20 times (the number of times was arbitrary) and graphed each roll above the ladybug with the corresponding number of spots. 




Luke LOVED this activity and he thought it was so funny how he never got a five!  This was a great math teacher moment for me and I got to introduce a little bit of experimental probability.  He kept saying "a five is next!  A five HAS to be next" and I got to explain how the chances of rolling a 5 was actually the same every time he rolled.  


 Next up, earlier in the morning we painted three paper plates solid red.  In the afternoon the boys and I painted ladybug spots on them.




Then we all practiced our best "grouchy" face :)




We cut the polka dot plates in half and attached them with a brad to a plain white plate and then cut out and taped on simple heads. 


The kids didn't know I had printed off their grouchy faces from earlier and I put them under the wings :)


 These may be my favorite craft of all time!

You can check out our previous Family Book Club days below.  Just click on the graphics!




PS -This post contained affiliate links, which means that if you click on a link and purchase an item, I may receive a small commission.  THANK YOU!!!

27 comments :

  1. Love these ideas! Green gummy frogs can be found on Amazon and the Candy Warehouse online. Thanks for continuing to shre your creativity!

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  2. Brilliant!!! Excellent!!! Fabulous!! Stand up and take a bow!! These posts appeal to my preschool teacher heart. I love them!!!

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  3. Brown Bear, Brown Bear has been the most read book at our house. Period. Without a doubt. Love these ideas!!

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  4. Girl you need to teach elementary!!!! 😄 fun crafts!!!

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  5. Andrea!! Such great ideas! I think the chameleon activity might be my fave!

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  6. I mean. STOP IT. G with the glue makes me laugh, and their grouchy ladybugs are precious. I'm seriously impressed with the chameleon craft as well!

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  7. Oh how I love this post!!! The lady bug and chameleon plates are adorable and so much fun!!!

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  8. Again, such a fun time for your kiddos! I bet they had a blast!!

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  9. YOU. ARE. AMAZING!!!! Drop the mike!

    Patty from Kingwood

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  10. Those lady bugs with their photos are adorable! You are uber creative, Andrea! Thanks for sharing.

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  11. My favorite part of this day is how Mason consistently does his own thing :)

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  12. Adorable as always! Can't wait to look back at these when I have kiddos!

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  13. The grouchy lady bug craft is absolutely adorable - you are so creative!

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  14. Love your book club posts! What fun!

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  15. Love!!!! I'm planning to do most of this with my 1at graders this fall! Perfect for author studies!!!! We do the carnation activity every year as a part of our science curriculum and it takes several days to change really good! Patience is not my thing but that activity requires it!!! :)

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  16. Love all of your ideas! I hope you continue with these..I am stealing all the wonderful ideas..lol. Enjoy your day from a fellow Canadian.

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  17. What great ideas! I love Griffin's face as a grouchy ladybug! So creative!

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  18. I am just loving that you are doing this!! Those ladybugs...I can't!!! What fun Andrea. Thanks for such great ideas.

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  19. ughh you are so creative! I love your blog so much! I stumbled upon your blog a few months ago from someone elses and now yours is my favorite to read! I hope I can be as creative and hands on as you

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  20. I love these ideas!!! You make it look so easy!

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  21. Fabulous ideas Andrea :) live your creativity with your kiddos

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  22. Seriously, you are the best BEST mother ever.

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  23. LOVE it all! That chameleon craft might be the cherry on top though :)

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  24. Love, love, love! I am seriously considering taking my grandchildren for a day or two and doing these books and craft activities with them. I think they will love it and my daughter in law will love me:)

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  25. Love these posts and I plan to copy some of your ideas. We are going to do our first family book this weekend on camping. I can't wait!

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  26. I've been looking for some good activities to do with the kids before they head back to school. Thanks for all the great inspiration!!

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