Author and Illustrator: Eric Carle
*Summary: This is an amazing book that tells about a number of things to the children hidden in a story of a caterpillar. The story tells about the life cycle of a butterfly that comes out of egg in a caterpillar form. Then he eats various foods like fruits, and other processed foods with increasing numbers day by day and finally he suffers from stomachache. For which he eats green leaves and gets better. Eating makes him a big fat caterpillar. Then he makes a house termed as cocoon. He stays there for two weeks and finally comes out as a grown butterfly.
*Why is it Appropriate for Toddlers and Two’s:
The book is absolute for the toddlers and 2 years babies as it includes illustrations along with pictures and colors. The story is beautifully written in which versatile information is taught to the children. The writer has smartly tried to teach the toddlers and twos about counting, about names of fruits and other foods and the names of days of a week. The writer also teaches the children about good and bad foods. By eating fruits the caterpillar grows well, but by over eating processed foods like cheese, pickles, chocolates and ice-cream, he gets ill. So the book clearly gives a message to the children that fruits are healthy diet as compared to processed foods and overeating is not good for health.
*3 Activities Related to the Book:
1. Plastic toys of caterpillar and butterfly shapes (Object Play):
Children will be provided to play with plastic/rubber toys of caterpillar and butterfly shapes.
2. Filling pencil colors to fruits by repeating theirs names (Art):
I will provide fruit shapes printed on paper related to this story and will ask the children to fill pencil colors in each drawing. By this way children will identify fruits.
3. Singing the story in poem form (Music): in the end after reading this story, we will sing this story in poem form. Like:
A caterpillar, caterpillar comes out of an egg
He feels very hungry,
On Monday he eats one apple.
And so on…
