For decades, Eric Carle has been a proclaimed author and illustrator of some of the most iconic picture books for children. Some of his best known works, such as “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and his illustrations in “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?” have melted the hearts of children and grown-ups around the world. All of us at the Heights Libraries love Eric Carle so much that we decided to base our Explorastory on books by him!
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Books we Read:
“The Very Busy Spider” by Eric Carle
“The Grouchy Ladybug” by Eric Carle
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar Pop-Up Book” by Eric Carle
Click Here to Order these books and other books by Eric Carle on the Heights Library Catalog
Song:
To go along with “The Very Busy Spider”, we sang the song, “Spider on the Floor” from Raffi’s Singable Songs Collection. I used a spider puppet to play along with the song and the children used bean bags.
Fingerplay:
Itsy Bitsy Spider
The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Went up the water spout
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out
Out came the sun
and dried up all the rain
and the itsy bitsy spider
Went up the spout again
Rhyme:
To go along with “The Grouchy Ladybug,” we used lady bug cut-outs with this rhyme:
(sung to the tune of “Farmer in the Dell”)
The Ladybug has spots,
The Ladybug has spots,
Can you count the number of this ladybug’s spots?
Fingerplay:
A Ladybug on Me (This is a great opener and can be used with a puppet)
One, two, three, there’s a ladybug on me!
Where did she go?
She’s on my toe
Where did shy fly?
She’s by my eye
Where did she land?
She’s on my hand
Now my hands are in my lap, so quiet and flat
And we’re ready for our stories, just like that!
Art Activity:
with strips of paper and colored tissue paper, we made collages in the style of Eric Carle’s illustrations. It was a lot of fun to see the colorful artwork that the children came up with all by themselves!
To watch a great video about how Eric Carle makes his artwork, watch here!
