Today we worked on learning the alphabet, and today we learned about the letter C. We started off with our usual pie tin bin full of things that start with the letter C. We had a cow, a cricket, corn on the cob, cucumbers, a caterpillar, a car, a carrot and a cookie to explore, as well as our Letter C book.

I really love these little bins, they really go over well with the little man. He always dutifully explores the different objects as I chat away about the letter we are learning about, and playing with the toys. As you all know I do the majority of my prep while he naps, and today was no different. We did a caterpillar craft, using some simple materials and a bit of imagination. You will need some construction paper, tape, a pencil, contact paper, scissors, a small plate and a pipe cleaner, all in the colours of your choice. This is a great craft for young toddlers because all they have to do is stick on the pieces, it is a bit off a collage, and my little one isn’t interested in much more than this at his age. Take your plate and use it as a stencil, tracing a circle onto each piece of construction paper, this will be making up the caterpillars body, use as many as you like, we used four.

I then used the inside rim of the plate to trace a smaller circle on the inside and cut it out so it looked like a zero. Then use your plate to cut out as many circles of contact paper as you have body pieces.

You still with me? Peel off the protective side of the contact paper circle and stick it onto the circle made out of construction paper, sticky side facing up. If you are confused here is your caterpillars body.

Do this for all of your caterpillar so you have as many sticky surfaces as you have pieces of body. Stick them all together with tape or glue and add some legs with your scraps. Thread the pipe cleaner through the top of the head, I curled the antennae by wrapping them around a pencil and your caterpillar is ready to be decorated! What you use to do this is completely up to you! I put some ripped up tissue paper, tiny pom poms and snipped up pieces of colourful yarn in a bowl and simply placed it on the floor beside the caterpillar. Once the little man came down he wandered over after some cuddles and I showed him that he could stick the colourful scraps to the caterpillar and he dove right in, taking whole fistfuls and mashing them into the sticky contact paper. I’m afraid my camera took a tumble at this point in the process (yikes! Any one know how to fix a lens error? ) and is out of commission but later in the day I pulled out an old one and took a picture of his finished product.

Next week we will be moving on to the letter D, we would love to hear your ideas and thank you for joining us at Excite and Explore!