A to Z challenge 2012: V is for Very

My theme for this year is "sharing books with children". This involves lots of reflecting on my favourite children's books, how I have enjoyed sharing books in the past and how I will continue to share books in the future. I have been learning a lot along the way, remembering lots of my favourite books and exploring new ideas for sharing books. I hope these posts will be interactive ones. Feel free to share your comments and ideas!

V is for Very. 

I have a few favourite children's books with very in the title. As part of the A to Z challenge I have already written about two books by Nick Bland - The Very Cranky Bear and The Very Itchy Bear. Another favourite of mine is The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. It was one of my favourites when I had just learnt to read. 

Did you know that this book started off being about a worm and was titled A week with Willi Worm? Who better to read and talk about this book than the author himself. You can watch a great short video of Eric Carle reading his book here and talking about The Very Hungry Caterpillar here. As I mentioned in a previous post about another of Eric Carle's book, the Official Eric Carle website is well worth exploring! 

My personal favourite activity based on this book is a simple early graphing activity. Either print out simple pictures of fruit or draw their own on small pieces of paper and then as a group make a simple graph using the pictures. Lots of counting practice and discussions about what type of fruit was eaten the most/least. I have also done this over a week, making a graph for each day and adding a simple story based on the text of the book - e.g. "On Monday we ate through six apples, four bananas, three oranges, two kiwi fruit and one serve of grapes." Of course this fabulous book can form the basis for many other activities - craft, healthy eating, counting etc. A quick google search will reveal a multitude of possibilities! Another great activity is using sequencing cards. You can find some for this book here.