By Anne Cottringer
Grade: Kindergarten to Grade 3
Discuss
- What is the first thing we learn about Bruna? How is she different from everyone else?
- Does her situation change from one season to the next? How do you know?
- Does she like her current condition? What does she do to try to change how she feels? Did any of her attempts work?
- One winter morning, everything changed. What did she hear and see out of her window? How did she react? Was she scared or courageous?
- After pulling Ursa our of the water, how else did she help her new friend?
- How did this new friendship end up helping Bruna?
- How do you feel when you are loved by someone? How do you feel when you show love to someone?
- When you are lonely, what does your day feel like? Do you prefer to be with people? Do your friends bring light and warmth to your day?
Activities
- Have the student write about one of their friends and have them follow up with a drawing to demonstrate what they wrote about. For the younger student, have them fill in the blanks with something like this: _____________ is my friend. We love to_____________________ together. What I love most about my friend________________.
- Have them in fill the blank to these two statements:
- I like a friend who_______________.
- I can be a friend by__________________.
- Another option would be to get this unit pack (or do something similar). I love the friend"ship" activity.
- Friendship art piece.
- Here is a Kind Hearts discussion activity. It demonstrates how the hearts of friends can be broken and then encourages the child to use words/actions to put the heart back together again.
- Check out this PDF for activities and further discussion questions on the topic of courage. Explore how being courageous can change the world we live in just as it changed the lives of Ursa and Bruna.
By Sandra Boynton
Ages: 3 months - 2 years
Discuss
- Ask the child about their favorite pajama. What does it look like, how does it feel, is it new/old?
- Look at the progression in book as the animals get ready for bedtime. Ask the child to give you their bedtime routine.
- Have the child complete the rhyming sentences and for your early readers, see if they can read and recognize their sight words.
- Talk about the word format on the last page. The words go from a large font to a very small font. What does that mean? Take a second to also look at the punctuation on this page. Notice how the sentence ends with the big font compared to how it ends with the smaller font. This is a good example of how to use exclamation marks.
Activities
- This book is a fantastic read for any and every night of the week. But take one night to actually have a pj party like they have in the book. Maybe put on some music and dance as they do in the book.
- Do a flashlight hunt. Have the children look for something that starts with a specific letter/sound using a flashlight.
- Day/Night sorting game. You can use this worksheet or you can print out your own clipart and glue them to index cards for sorting. You could also check out this free Day and Night unit PDF.
- Have fun with a sand art lightbox. This website shows you how to build your own!
- Check out this interactive map that shows where it is daylight when you have darkness.
- For the younger students, draw different pajamas on card stock with a variety of colors and designs. Separate the top from bottom and have the child find the two that go together. You could also make duplicates so that the child can sort the pajamas by more than one factor (color, shapes, design, size, old/new).
By Steve Light
Ages: 3 months - 2 years
Discuss
- Have fun making the sounds of the train and encourage your child to join you. Talk about why that specific train is making that sound. For example: it is a fast train, a slow train, it is going up hill, it is an old train.
- As you read, insert the color of the train.
- Discuss the different types of trains. What does that type of train do?
- If you could be the conductor, what train would you drive?
- Have you seen a train? What sound did it make? What did it look like?
- Have you ridden in a train? If so, where did you go? If not, where would you like to go?
Activities
By Betty Schwartz and Alex Wilensky
Ages: 3 - 6 years
Discuss
- Have the child guess the color as you read through the book.
- See if they can count the dots.
- On each page there is something pictured that represents the new color added to the snake. Ask the child to identify that item. For example: When the snake gets black spots, pictured on the same page is a black crab.
- As the snake grows, it adds more colors to its skin. See if the child can name a couple ways in which he has changed as he has grown.
- Was the snake happy with the end result? Ask what the child likes most about the person that they have grown into?
Activities
- Draw or print and cut out some snake outlines (enough for each color in the book + one more for the 'blended' snake). As you reread the story, have the child use a pencil eraser and some ink to dot the correct spots on the snake. Glue the snakes in order on a separate sheet of paper.
- Do some color matching worksheets. You could easily make your own dotted snake color matching worksheets.
By Eric Carle
Ages: 1 - 3 years
Activities
- Caterpillar Collage.
- Make your own hungry caterpillar mural.
- Have the child write out an acrostic poem or/and a haiku poem
(an unrhymed three-line poem) using the butterfly topic. These poems
can be added to the mural. Haiku poems are very simplistic but if you
need further details, check out this webpage.
- Practice writing the days of the week and food names with these mini books.
- Here are two worksheets with the hungry caterpillar theme. One is for pre-writing skills (line tracing) and the other is for the child to write a summary of the book.
- Make an egg carton caterpillar.
- I have a caterpillar hand puppet made of felt from my mother-in-law. She also made a cocoon, butterfly, and fruit/food (all out of felt). The kids love feeding the caterpillar food as we go through the story. They find the fruit/food I mention and then count how many the caterpillar needs to eat. Then I put the caterpillar inside the cocoon and out comes the butterfly! That of course, is their favorite part. The older kids love to work the hand puppet themselves as they recount the story. You could easily make your own hand puppet or get something like what I saw on this webpage. The link also gives you an activity idea for sorting and counting.
- If you don't want to make a hand puppet, here is another great idea using an old Parmesan jar as the hungry caterpillar.
- Get crafty and make some caterpillar or butterfly finger puppets.
- Here are some math problem worksheets with the hungry caterpillar theme.
- Make pattern block butterflies. Great way to study colors, numbers, and symmetry. It also allows the child to be creative. They can repeat the activity several times and easily come up with different patterns to explore.
- This free worksheet has children measuring with cut out caterpillars.
- This free unit (PDF format) has a good variety of lesson themes including: days of the week, counting, butterflies, life cycles of a butterfly, opposites, sequencing, and healthy foods.
- Very Hungry Caterpillar vocabulary cards.
- Caterpillar magnet craft using little pompoms and clothespins.
By Robert Neubecker
Ages: 3 - 7 years
Grade Level: Preschool - 2
Discuss
- See if you can spot Izzy and Jo hiding in the picture pages.
- There is so much to see on each page, discuss what makes that area of the USA special. What can we learn about that area's climate or economy? Could you live there? Would you like to visit? Do you know anyone who lives there? What do people who live there do for a living? What do they do for fun?
- Seeing all the different areas what does it tell us about our country? Are we a small/big country? Are we diverse? What kind of opportunities do we have in the USA?
Activities
- Have the students draw and write what makes them say WOW about the USA.
- Print out an outline map of the USA. Color in the states that are represented in the book and have the students make a color code key as a reference.
- Look into the world of lobster fishing. Make a lobster hand and footprint piece of art.
- Get this print out of the Statue of Liberty. Make your own Statue of Liberty portrait. Or this Statue of Liberty outline painting.
- Here is a fifth grade Lady Liberty art project.
- Niagara Falls
- The Capitol
- Atlantic coast
- cape canaveral
- state fairs
- new orelans
- Mississippi River
- Chicago and poet Carl Sandbury
- Corn/MidWest
- Cattle Ranchers
- Grand Canyon
- Rocky Mountains
- California Sequoias
- North West Salmon
- Hawaiis Volcanoes
- Alaska Glacier
By Irene Kelly
Age: Grades 3 - 5
Discuss
- How many types of butterflies and moths are there in this world? Just a few? Thousands?
- Name the three main body parts of a butterfly. Answer: head, thorax, abdomen
- How many legs does a butterfly have? How many are used for walking? What is important about the butterfly's feet?
- How does a butterfly eat? What does it like to eat?
- Describe a butterflies wings. How do they work? What happens if a butterfly gets too cold to fly?
- Do all butterflies migrate?
- How do butterflies mate?
- Once the caterpillar hatches from the egg, what comes next?
- What is frass?
- Describe molting. How many time will a caterpillar molt before it is full grown?
- How do different caterpillars survive into adulthood? Camouflage? Calls for help?
- Metamorphosis takes a lot of work! Tell me, how does a caterpillar finally change into a butterfly?
- Name some threats to the butterfly. Some butterflies are endangered or extinct...what does that mean? What can you do to provide a supportive and beautiful environment for butterflies where you live?
Activities
