Eric Carle {Author Study}

If you follow me on Instagram, you know that this week we have started an author study on Eric Carle...another one of my favorite authors and illustrators! Here are some pics of our week so far!

We started the week off learning about who Eric Carle is. My kids are already referring to him as if he is a close personal friend. We read Today is Monday, and sang the song. During math we used the book The Tiny Seed as a springboard for some "seedy" addition practice. I let me kids paint a flower. I was using this craft as a "test run" to see how this group of kids would do painting in an "unsupervised" setting. I'll admit that although painting is something that my students absolutely LOVE...it is not something that we do too often...and if we are being really honest, painting usually means me dipping their hand in some paint and stamping it onto a paper. However, when it comes to learning about Eric Carle I feel like painting is NECESSARY. Since my day doesn't allow tons of extra time for painting, this was an activity that I expected my students to do independently. I went to Michael's and got some supplies which have turned out to be very helpful. The sponges are really easy to paint with and give great texture! The flowers came out so great, I decided that we had to keep them as part of our Mother's Day gifts.

On Tuesday we read Little Cloud. After we did a sorting activity, we did word work with clouds {shaving cream}. The kids also drew what they would be if they were a cloud. We did a little Water Cycle investigation and even did some cloudy addition!  

Today we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It is a favorite FOR SURE! We did a little butterfly research and created our own beautiful butterflies.

{From Spring into Nonfiction}

The kids wrote about a time they were very hungry. One of my favorites included cereal and throw up. :/ {Due to the graphic nature of the illustrations I didn't post that one! ;)}

{One day I was very hungry. I ate pizza and sour patch kid extremes. But I was still hungry.}

In math we worked with making numbers using the food from the story. A few months ago I found these stickers at Dollar Tree, and bought a bunch! I let the kids use them to create math problems.

At the end of the day we created some window art using coffee filters. SO much fun!

I hope you enjoy Eric Carle's books as much as my students and I do! Here's a little freebie for you to get started! {Click pic below!}

If you are looking for more Eric Carle activities, make sure you check out this unit!