To kick off the month of May when the preschool students begin learning about imagination and books, they started with a theme on real vs. make-believe. We read many books and heard many stories. We featured The 3 Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the 3 Bears. We compared how pigs and bears are real but in these stories, they are make-believe.

We capped off the week on Friday with a costume day. Students were allowed to come to school dressed up in their favorite costumes. I liked the variety of costumes this year. We had half and half real and make-believe characters.

Superman. Spiderman. A pizza man. Cinderella. Two butterflies. A dancer. An Army man. A soccer player. A train conductor. Dora the Explorer. A monkey. A pirate. Barbie. Even I dressed up as a bumble bee.

We made a list of all the characters and categorized them as real and make-believe.

After a week of learning about how caterpillars morph into butterflies, the preschool students worked on this project at the end of the week to show that they understand the life cycle process. This was sort of like their ‘final exam’ for the caterpillars to butterflies theme week.

Square 1 shows the caterpillar egg. They used an unpopped popcorn kernal.

Square 2 shows the caterpillar by using a small piece of yarn.

Square 3 shows the chrysalis or the cocoon with the tip of a cotton swab Q-tip.

Finally, square 4 shows the butterfly with two pieces of elbow macaroni placed back to back for the wings.

To accompany The Very Hungry Caterpillar book by Eric Carle, the preschool students enjoyed the game. This game is great for teaching shapes and matching. Students spin the spinner then move their caterpillar piece to the fruit on which the spinner landed. They choose that color shape piece and match it to the space on the butterfly wings.

This game is great for little competition. There really is no winner or loser. The students only spin and match the pieces to the butterfly.

Great for color recognition and taking turns in game play.

The preschool students made a whimsical class book to compare caterpillars to people. The copies of the pages came from the May Mailbox book in the theme unit From Caterpillars to Butterflies. 

One page read: Caterpillars smell with their antennae. The next page read: I smell with my nose. We took a picture of one student’s nose and glued it on that page.

Another page read: Caterpillars taste with their feet. The next page read: I taste with my tongue. We took a picture of another student’s tongue and attached it to that page.

This was a funny activity for the preschool students and they enjoyed looking back through the little booklet to see their body parts. This made for a funny way to end the school day.

For a fun activity to practice number counting or order, the preschool students put this caterpillar number puzzle in order from 1-10.

Draw and cut out circles for each piece of the caterpillar. Draw a face on the first one and number each of the other circles with numbers.

For an alternative: use letters of the alphabet or letters of words.

Students will choose each circle of the caterpillar to place in the correct order.