Littles Learning Link Up: April 9, 2019: Pattern Caterpillar Crafts

Each month you will find:

• A seasonal round-up (usually toward the beginning of the month)
• Posts where I share what I have been up to with my early elementary children and the preschoolers I work with at our homeschool co-op (including occasional highlight posts where I share how we used ideas that have been linked up here on Littles Learning Link Up).

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme.  Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up. 

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child(ren).

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked-up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

We are still in the middle of our metamorphosis/life cycle lessons in our class at co-op. We finished our Tadpole/Frog lessons, and we have moved on to Caterpillar/Butterfly lessons.

During our first week, we focused on Caterpillars and Patterns.

I read these two books to the children:

Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jr. and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

The first book was read at the beginning of class, and the illustrations of the caterpillars really helped with our discussion about patterns. The second book was read toward the end of class when we were making our pattern caterpillar snack.

Now, onto this week's crafts!

Pattern Caterpillar Books

Here's what you will need:

Acrylic paint in various colors

Card stock cut into 3 pieces for the pages

Bottle caps (I used the size that goes on my water bottle)

Paper Plate

Permanent marker

We made three different pattern caterpillars for the books. The children were asked to choose two colors which would be used for each page. We put some of each color on a paper plate for them, and they got two bottle caps. That way they didn't mix the colors.

Though the colors were the same for each of their caterpillars, the patterns were not. I led them through making three different patterns.

ABABAB

ABBABB

and

AABBAA

I demonstrated on my own page, encouraging them to use either their first or second color, and as we got further into the caterpillar, asking them if they could figure out which color to use next.

Once we had three pages finished, we set them aside to dry.

Later on, they used the permanent markers to draw on faces.

Here are their almost finished books. I just had to staple the books together for the children to take home.

Our second craft that day was this cute little 

Pompom Pattern Caterpillar:

Here is what you will need:

Craft sticks (one per child)

Brown acrylic paint

Paint brush

Q-tip tips

Pompoms

Wiggle eyes

White glue

Scissors

In preparation for this craft I cut the tips off of the Q-tips.

While the caterpillars for the Pattern Caterpillar Books were drying, the children painted their craft sticks brown.

These were also set aside to dry while the children went to snack and gym. When they came back they worked on finishing these two crafts, we also sang some songs, made a caterpillar counting book, and had a pattern caterpillar snack. I will be sharing the extra activities in my Learning About Life Cycles: Caterpillar/Butterfly Lessons post in a couple of weeks.

To finish the pompom caterpillars the children were asked to pick three colors of pompoms. They were given two of each color and asked to make a pattern out of them. Then we applied glue to the craft stick and the children attached the pompoms in the order they wanted.

Some did a ABCABC pattern, while others preferred AABBCC.

We then put a couple of dots of glue on the first pompom and the children attached the eyes. Then we put some glue between the first and second pompom for the children to stick the Q-tip tips into for antennae. 

Unfortunately it gets quite hectic toward the end of class, and I didn't have a chance to take pictures of the finished caterpillars. 

Let's take a look at that review schedule real quick:

A couple of weeks ago I shared my review for Poetry for the Grammar Stage from Memoria Press.

This month I will be sharing reviews of CrossWired Science and Techie Homeschool Mom. 

In May I will share my review for the first two books in the Hamelin Stoop series from 12 Gates Publishing, Pathway to Liberty, Elementary Math Games from The Critical Thinking Co., the book God is Better Than Trucks from Christian Focus, another picture book titled Nothing from Worthy Kids, plus a couple of online subscriptions from EdAlive.

Phew, yes we are busy with review products again.

Here are a couple of things I would like to share with you:

Learning About Life Cycles: Tadpole/Frog Lessons

Springtime Fairy Round Up

Focusing on the Cross With 15 Jesus-Centered Books for Resurrection Sunday

Focusing on Jesus Resurrection Day Round Up

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 9 wonderful posts linked up. I will be sharing a randomly selected post and the top clicked on posts.

Please, don't forget to stop by other posts that are linked up. See what catches your eye, stop by, pin the post to a relevant board, and perhaps leave a comment to let the author of the blog know you have been by for a visit. I know I appreciate others commenting and letting me know they have read my posts, so I am sure others do too.

This week's randomly selected post is:

Kristen from A Mom's Quest to Teach shared Crafts: Paper Bag Goat Puppet.

And here are this week's most clicked-on posts:

Gale from Imaginative Homeschool shared CRAFT: Spring Flowers Sun-Catcher.

Brandy from The Barefoot Mom shared The Butterfly Lifecycle

Brandy from The Barefoot Mom also shared Spring Bucket List.

Join the Party!

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on one of my relevant boards, and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up.

Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our school time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Monday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

No button currently, and there won't be one until I can figure it out seeing as Photobucket has changed things. Feel free to still share the picture in place of the button. Just link it to my Littles Learning Link Up permalink please.

I am sharing over at

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Alphabet Matching Sun Activity

Even before we started My Father's World last month I had this idea in my head. I wanted to make an activity that would help with recognizing upper and lower case letters plus have the children work on their fine motor skills.

I glued 3 paper plates together to make it sturdier (I guess I could have used cardboard, but I like the way the edge of the paper plate looks like sun rays). Then I painted the top yellow. I also painted 26 clothes pins. 13 are yellow and the other 13 are gold as I wanted to incorporate patterns too. When they were dry I wrote the lower case letters on the plate and the upper case letters on the clothes pins.

The girls are to match upper case with lower case. Having to open and close the clothespins will help their fine motor skills.

Springtime Patterns

This week we continued working on our Pattern Garden from last week. We also discussed the fact that some of the patterns we put on our Garden are Opposites. Here is what was on our Pattern Garden picture at the end of last week.

We used long/short and big/small.

This week we added clouds in the sky and focused on the opposite up/down.

We then had our second Pattern Muffin Tin

And later in the week we made Pattern Parfaits for Kids and a Mom  in the Kitchen.

We layered Chocolate Oreo Crumbs, Chocolate Pudding and Coolwhip.

We finished our Spring Pattern Gardens by adding Butterflies using the opposite open/closed. The open winged butterflies are flying above a flower, while the closed wing butterflies are resting on the flower. I had the girls decide on what pattern they wanted to make on the table, then I explained how we were going to place them on the paper.

They also decided there needed to be rain.

I had some paper squares I cut out of scrap paper set aside. I figured when I was busy it would be a fun activity for the girls to make some random patterns.

The blue papers are Tabitha's and the red papers are Amelia's (Hannah was sleeping). 

We also continued work on our Color Garden (for Hannah) and Word Family Gardens (for the older two).

Tabitha and Amelia are not gluing theirs on yet because we are using them for different activities.  I would say a word and have them find it to put on their flower. We have done the following Word families this week- ed, eg and ell. 

They then took turns reading a word and finding it for their flowers.

Then we played a memory match game. I combined the girls' petals for the eg words so we would have doubles. Then we placed them upside down. When they turned up a petal they had to say the word. Other than that it was a typical Memory Match game.

I also came up with a fun subtraction game. Tabitha was using the Shaker Jar with Toothpicks. This was obviously a simple activity for her so I wanted to add something to it. I made her count 10 toothpicks out of the bunch that were in there. After setting the extras aside I explained the game to her. She was reminded that  there were 10 toothpicks in the jar. She then was to shake the jar three times upside down so toothpicks would fall out of the holes. She then recorded how many toothpicks fell out on a piece of paper. She was then to figure out how many toothpicks were left in the jar. After thinking about it and giving a guess, she could take them out and count them. 

Toothpicks in jar - Toothpicks that fell out = Toothpicks left

10 - ? = ?

I am linking up to