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Welcome back to Pondering Playtime, my fortnightly series where I share a favourite picture book and a craft or play activity to go with it. This week, I’ve chosen 
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The Very Hungry Caterpillar is about exactly that; a hungry little caterpillar who eats his way through all manner of things before turning into a beautiful butterfly. This book is a children’s classic and is fun to read and look at the illustrations as well as helping to teach days of the week and the lifecycle of a butterfly.
Up to know I’ve always done fairly ‘dry’ activities with M – and I mean that literally! We’ve used dry sensory materials such as rice, lentils, cardboard, cotton wool etc. The closest I’ve got to anything messy and wet is when we used ice for our polar tuff spot, although we have been known to use shaving foam and water in the garden during the summer months!
I wanted to give M a different type of sensory experience with this tuff spot, so I chose to use cooked spaghetti instead. I decided to colour the spaghetti green to make it a bit more interesting for M (I simply added a very generous squirt of gel food colouring to the water as the spaghetti was cooking). For the caterpillars, I simply found a printable image online and printed and laminated a handful. M’s wooden fruit made a great colourful addition.
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M really enjoys reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar as she loves poking her fingers into the holes that the caterpillar has eaten through the foods in the book. I love this book as I think it will make a great starting point for learning the days of the week and talking about life cycles as she gets older.
As for the tuff spot activity, M was very interested in the spaghetti and did play with it for a little while, but I think she prefers the more varied textures of tuff spot zones like the Dear Zoo sensory tuff spot I made for her a few weeks ago. I’ll keep going with different textures and experiences, though, as I want her to gain confidence with them!
If you enjoyed this, you can find more Pondering Playtime activities here, and you might like to join my Early Years craft and activity Facebook group; Play Craft, Explore. We’d love to have you! And lastly, don’t forget to Pin it!
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