Who wants free worksheets for their preschooler? I’ve got a super cute pack of the The Very Hungry Caterpillar worksheets that are free to download. You can print them over and over again (for personal use) so that your child can practice writing their alphabet, numbers, and have some counting fun!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a children’s classic! This picture book is a favorite many times over! This is a must read if you haven’t read it yet. Borrow it from your local library, watch this read-aloud from Brightly Storytime, or buy it on Amazon so you can read over and over again.
I love theming my books with worksheets, so here are 9 very hungry caterpillar themed worksheets for your preschooler! Included are alphabet tracing ( 2 pages), number tracing, fill in the missing numbers, counting, I Spy, spot the differences, identify sizes; color fruits page, and follow the line worksheets.
Preschoolers will love learning to count, practicing their ABCs, and working on their fine motor skills!
More Fun – Crafts and STEM!
Add some STEM fun into your little one’s learning with this adorable The Very Hungry Caterpillar Magna-Tiles set. This is the coolest building set! Children get to bring the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to life while engaging their eye-hand coordination, understanding of magnets, and spatial awareness — plus they are stimulating their creativity. This building set is so much fun and perfect for families looking to add more STEM activities into their little one’s play as their are a lot of shapes and towers to be made!
Maltipoo Dog Reading Laura Numeroff’s “If You Give a Dog a Donut.”
Did you know that August 26th is Dog Appreciation Day? Pretty cool! Let’s celebrate by reading dog stories, making a dog paper bag puppet, and doing a fun Dog-Themed I Spy challenge, !
DOG STORIES:
There are so many great dog stories out there to read — it’s hard to narrow it down to just five.
When I asked my son what his favorite dog book is, he immediately said Karma Wilson’s book, A Dog Named Doug. Doug the dog is a digging machine. He digs a holes to everywhere and gets into a bit of trouble along the way. The book ends happily with Doug digging a hole into his family’s bedroom for a bedtime cuddle. My son loves this book and he laughs every single time we read it. We have checked this out from our library numerous times, and we hope you will check it from yours too! It is also available on Amazon if you want to buy it.
Goodnight, Good Dog by Mary Lyn Ray is one of my son’s bedtime favorites! It is a sweet and soothing story that is perfect for bedtime cuddles. The dog isn’t ready to go to bed yet, and even though everyone and everything is sleeping, dog can’t help but think about its fun day. As dog explores the sleeping house, it begins to grow tired, but just a little bit. Eventually dog falls asleep in its moon-shaped bed and has sweet dreams until it is time to wake up and play again.
The dog in the story, Love is My Favorite Thing, by Emma Chichester Clark, reminds me so much of one of our dogs — both of them are so joyful and so full of LOVE (even if they do get into a little trouble)! I could substitute my dog’s name for the character’s name and it would basically be a true story! In this book, the dog, Plum, and her family show the unconditional love we all feel for our family, both two and four-legged.
If you are a fan of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, then you’ll also like Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Dog a Donut. Turns out if you give a dog a donut, a great story ensues! This cute story is a fun read-aloud and good introduction to sequencing. Be prepared for your little one to request a donut to go with this book! Find a copy at your library, or buy it onAmazon.
Our last dog book is Pug Meets Pigby Sue Lowell Gallion. We discovered this book at our library and checked it out so we could read it at bedtime. This is a really cute story about a little pug who gets jealous of the new pet pig, who seems to disrupts all of pug’s routine activities. Kids experiencing their own bouts of jealousy with new siblings or classmates, as well as kids who are anxious about changes in their routines, can relate to pug’s feelings. Ultimately the two become friends and both of them learn that even though new changes can be worrisome, it can also lead to fun experiences and new friends!
DOG PAPER BAG PUPPET:
Make your own super cute dog puppet from a paper bag and construction paper!
First, pick out which color ears, nose, and tummy you want your dog to have. Cut out 2 ears (we made long, floppy ears), an oval tummy, and a small, round nose. Cut out a long, pink tongue – make sure it is long to partially hide it under the flap of the bag.
Now that your pieces are cut out, it is time to glue them on to your paper bag. We used a glue stick for this. Make sure that the folded side of the bag is facing you before you start glueing.
Glue on your ears, nose, and tummy. Then, lift the flap and glue your tongue down onto the bag, so that it partially under the flap. When you put your hand in the bag and move the flap, it will look like your dog is opening its mouth.
Last, pick out googly eyes for your pup. Attach them to complete your dog puppet.
I SPY CHALLENGE:
How many of each dog can you find in this picture? Write the number in the box next to the picture of each dog.
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Whether you live near the ocean or not, you can enjoy beach-theme books and activities with your little one at home. Check your library for beach-theme books!
Beach-theme books and activities
We made it to the beach! And of course, we had to bring some of our favorite beach-themed books with us 🙂 Books, waves, sandcastles, and lots of splashing made for a great time!
Enjoy some of our favorite beach-theme books and activities with us!
Beach-Theme Books—
Duck and Goose Go to the Beach
Duck and Goose are some of our favorite picture book characters! My son has loved them for years (and I’ve loved them even longer!). We’ve been reading Duck and Goose stories since he was a baby. Their books come in a board book format that was perfect for when my kiddo was in the grabby stage, and now that he’s older, we read the picture books. We have actually brought Duck and Goose go theBeachand the stuffed animals to the beach with us a few times now 🙂 In this book, the two friends set off on an adventure and find themselves at the beach! But do they actually the sand, sun, and waves? Read it and find out 🙂
How to Catch a Mermaid
My son LOVES Adam Wallace’s How to Catch a Mermaid!It’s a fun book about 2 kids and dog who hatch all sorts of plans to catch a mermaid because who wouldn’t want to have a mermaid friend, right!?! Spoiler, the kids get themselves trapped instead and the mermaid saves the day! This book has rhyming text and bold, bright pictures that compliment the fun story. This has been one of my son’s favorites for a over a year now and we hope you like it as much as we do!
The Sandcastle that Lola Built
The Sandcastle that Lola Builtby Megan Maynor– based on the “House that Jack Built” story, this is a cute book about a little girl’s beach day. In this great example of teamwork, Lola and her new friends work together to make a sandcastle for mermaids. Fantastic pictures and rhyming text make this book a winner!
After reading this, we had to make our own sandcastle 🙂 And just like in the book, the tide washed away our castle too!
Inky’s Amazing Escape
Inky’s Amazing Escapeby Sy Montgomery — my kiddo loves this book! It is a true story about an octopus named Inky, who escapes from an aquarium in Australia and makes its way back to the ocean. We learned a lot about octopuses from this non-fiction picture book, and we were fascinated by Inky’s journey. My son was so excited when he learned that Inky liked playing Legos just like he does! Out of all of the books written about Inky, this one is our favorite. Sy Montgomery is a gifted storyteller and we were absolutely fascinated by this amazing octopus. I check out lots of library books for my son and I to read together, but this is one book that we felt that we needed to own. We truly love this story and read it over-and-over again.
Over in the Ocean
My son got Over in the Ocean: in a Coral Reeffor his birthday recently and it is AWESOME! It has fantastic pictures that were formed from clay by artist Jeanette Canyon that perfectly compliment Marianne Berkes’ sing-songy text. You and your little one will want to study these pictures over-and-over again to get all of the details incorporated onto each page. This book introduces a variety of cool sea creatures. It also lends itself well to movement activities that preschoolers will love to do. At the end, there is a seek-and-find activity to search for all of the sea creatures from the book, as well as a sneak-peek into the clay creations. We had so much fun reading this at the beach!
Beach Day!
Candace Ransom writes great beginning-reader books. The text is simple, but not boring and the pictures capture the joy of the kids’ adventures. In Beach Day!the family heads out to enjoy the beach together. The book captures the fun, excitement, and joy of family outing at the seashore. The kids gather seashells, build a sand castle, and see some neat sea creatures. As you read this one with your little one, you just can’t help but get caught up in the fun! Be prepared to read this multiple times 🙂
The Snail and the Whale
Another one of our favorite authors is Julia Donaldson; her books are perfect for preschoolers and kindergartners! For our beach-theme stories, my son and I read A Snail and a Whale. A snail yearns to explore in this rhyming book. However, snail finds that its explorations are hindered by its size. When whale offers to help snail take a journey, it is a dream come true. Snail enjoys adventuring with the large whale. Uh-oh, whale gets stuck and it is up to the small snail to help its new friend. This story goes to show that no matter how small you are, you can still help others.
Beach-Theme Activities —
To go along with our beach stories, my son had fun doing a beach and an ocean-themed I Spy challenges and an ocean-themed Find The Differences worksheet.
SPOUTING WHALE: this turned out super cute and my kiddo really enjoyed making this.
Spouting Whale
Supplies needed are white and blue construction paper, pencil, scissors, blue tissue paper ( 1″ x 1″ squares), glue stick, white school glue, and googly eyes.
1. I drew a whale shape on the blue paper and cut it out.
2. My son used a glue stick to glue the whale onto the white paper. Next he rubbed the glue stick all over the bottom of the paper and glued on the blue tissue paper squares to make the ocean water.
3. Together, we wadded up the blue tissue paper squares to make the water spout.
4. Using the white school glue, I added glue dots in the pattern of the whale’s water spout and then my son added the wadded the tissue.
5. To complete his craft he added the googly eyes.
TOILET PAPER ROLL OCTOPUS:
My son loves Inky’s story so much that we decided to make an octopus craft.
Inky the Octopus
Supplies needed are an empty toilet paper roll, washable paint, paintbrush, kid safety scissors, googly eyes, and a marker.
-First we painted the toilet paper roll red. (use whatever color you want). Then we let it dry.
-After it dried, my son made cuts in the bottom of the toilet paper roll to make 8 legs. He gently pulled each leg up so that they legs splayed out and his octopus could stand.
-Then he attached the googly eyes and drew a mouth, and our cute little octopus was ready to explore our house!
Hope you enjoyed our beach-theme books and activities!
To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate Program. I get a small percentage of the sale if you buy a book through one of my links. Thanks for your support! Happy reading 🙂
Letter D is awesome — Dinosaurs, Dogs, Donuts, and Ducks! This was a fun week for my preschooler. We read books about his favorite animals, ate donuts, danced along to We are the Dinosaurs, and made a neat Froot Loops Tower.
Monday — D is for Dinosaur
Writing Practice: write uppercase D. For this letter, we used a worksheet from AtoZteacherstuff.com:
Book: Crunch the Shy Dinosaurby Cirocco Dunlap. This is a fun, interactive book that really engages with the reader. Young children will have a blast getting to know Crunch by saying hello, singing Happy Birthday, and introducing themselves. It also encourages the reader to take into consideration that other people (and dinosaurs) might be shy when you first meet them and to let them have some quiet space to adjust to new people.
Check your library for Crunch, the Shy Dinosaur, or buy it on Amazon.
Craft / Activity:Dinosaur Coloring Page — use your creativity and color or paint an awesome dino picture! Then, Find 5 Differences between these 2 dinosaur scenes:
Song: This was great excuse to sing along to our of my favorite preschool songs, We Are the Dinosaurs by the Laurie Berkner Band. Watch the music video on YouTube and march along!
Tuesday —
STEM: Build a Froot Loops Tower. This project is great for working on fine-motor skills!
Froot Loops Tower
Supplies needed are Play-Doh, a dry spaghetti noodle, and Froot Loops cereal.
First, make a mound out of Play-Doh to use as your tower’s base.
Second, stick a spaghetti noodle into the center of the base and make sure to really smush the Play-Doh around the bottom of the noodle so that it stands up.
Now it is time to make the tower and work on fine motor skills! Take your Froot Loops and carefully drop each down the noodle, making a tower as they stack. Have fun making color patterns. Bonus, you get to eat the cereal after your are done making towers 😉
Air Writing: Ask your child to hold up a hand and trace letter shapes with their finger in the air. I was skeptical of this at first, but my son really got into it and I found him air writing his letters all on his own.
“Dog I Spy” Worksheet: practice counting with this cute dog-themed I Spy picture.
Books — We read dog stories! My son loves Karma Wilson’s book, A Dog Named Doug. Doug the dog is a digging machine. He digs a holes to everywhere and gets into a bit of trouble along the way. The book ends happily with Doug digging a hole into his family’s bedroom for a bedtime cuddle. My son loves this book and he laughs every single time we read it. We have checked this out from our library numerous times, and we hope you will check it from yours too! It is also available on Amazon if you want to buy it.
We also read Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Dog a Donut. Turns out if you give a dog a donut, a great story ensues! This cute story is a fun read-aloud and good introduction to sequencing. Find a copy at your library, or buy on Amazon.
Craft — Paper Plate Donut. Supplies needed are paper plate, light brown watercolor paint and paintbrush, construction paper (we used pink), scissors, white glue, and sprinkles.
1. First my son painted the entire plate light brown.
2. While it was drying, we picked our construction paper for the donut icing. We went with the classic pink for our donut, but also strongly considered brown for a chocolate icing. I cut out a wavy shape in the pink paper.
3. After the donut plate was dry, I cut out the center to give it the donut shape.
4. My son used white, school glue to attach the icing to the plate.
5. Last, he glued on sprinkles to complete his paper plate donut 🙂
Songs — For letter D, we sang the “Donut Song.” If you don’t know this song, you can check it out on YouTube. My son loves this song and he sings it all of the time!
Thursday —
Salt Tray Writing: cover the bottom of a shallow tray or pie tin with a layer of table salt. Your child can take one finger to trace letter shapes in the salt. Make bother uppercase D and lowercase d.
Worksheet: Draw a line from the lowercase d to all of the uppercase D letters.
Book:Little Quack’s New Friendby Lauren Thompson. The whole Little Quack series is adorable, but I am partial to this one because I love the new froggy friend. This Little Quack story embodies preschooler’s shyness about meeting new people, but children’s innate playfulness and curiosity wins over and everyone has fun playing together. Plus, this story is full of fun sound words to say!
There are many cute stories in the Little Quack series. Hopefully your library has this one and others. It is available for purchase on Amazon.
Craft: Color and Feathers Duck Craft — supplies needed are duck coloring sheet, crayons, white school feathers, and glue.
Here’s the coloring page we used. I found on getcoloringpages.com. Feel free to draw your own duck or cut out a duck shape from construction paper if you don’t like this one.
We used crayons to color our duck. My son worked hard to color within the lines!
Then we picked out feathers for our duck and attached them with white, school glue.
Song: Raffi’s Five Little Ducks. I really enjoy doing hand movements to this song. We hold up fingers on one hand for the five little ducks, folding down fingers as the ducks go over the hill. The other is our mama duck and we keep our fingers together and move them up and down to touch the thumb to make a mouth movement for the quacking parts. If you don’t know this song, it’s available on YouTube.
Whether your child is doing preschool (or kindergarten) at home or at a school, or just getting into the back-to-school excitement with an older sibling, here is a list of 14 fun, school-themed books to enjoy together. I’m also including a cute school-themed I Spy game that makes counting lots of fun!
School Stories:
1. The Night Before Preschoolby Natasha Wing — written in a rhyming style similar to Clement Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, this is a cute read for those who want to know what to expect at preschool. The little boy in the story is too nervous to sleep, but he learns that preschool is tons of fun and he can’t wait to go back the next day 🙂
2. Click, Clack, Quack to Schoolby Doreen Cronin — for those who are nervous that school isn’t going to be much fun, the farm animals show that school is lots of fun and everyone has great time. The animals’ antics as they prepare to visit the school will have your child giggling.
3. The Pigeon Has to Go Schoolby Mo Willems — Even pigeons get worried about starting school (who knew?). The pigeon worries about everything, including worrying about learning too much! Kids will find themselves laughing at the pigeon’s over-the-top reactions and will subtly find that, just like the pigeon, they might not need to worry so much themselves. All around great read, even for those who aren’t worried about school.
4. King of Kindergartenby Derrick Barnes — This story is a great confidence booster. No need to worry about the first day of school; you got this, because you are the king of kindergarten! In this book, the parents help build up their child’s self-confidence and ease school worries away.
5. Time for School,Little Blue Truckby Alice Schertle — this is a new book in the Little Blue Truck series and this time, Little Blue gets to help a young piggy who missed the bus. Preschoolers will love Little Blue’s kindness in this beautifully illustrated, rhyming book.
6. Froggy Goes to School by Jonathan London — Froggy is adorable. These books are always a fun read, with vibrant pictures, a lot of fun sounds to make, and an enthusiastic story. I have always enjoyed reading Froggy to my preschool storytime group at the library and to my own son because the stories lend themselves so well to movement activities.
7. Lola Goes to Schoolby Anna McQuinn — I LOVE the Lola books! They are super cute, show such positive family relationships, have great pictures, and are relatively short stories. Lola shows how much school can be in this story. She gets her own cubby to store her things, gets to choose fun activities, plays with new friends, and gets a yummy snack. Soon it’s time to go home!
8. The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn — In this sweet story, a little raccoon is scared to start school. Little ones can relate to the racoon’s fears of being away from home. Mama racoon has a great solution; she kisses his hand so that he can bring her love with him. This story is just so touching — be prepared to get teary-eyed as you read it! It’s a reassuring story both kids and parents.
9. Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney — this book really tugged at my emotions. It’s also hard for us parents to be separated from our kids when school starts! Told in rhyming text, this book explores the fears many kids face on the first day of school.
10. Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes by Eric Litwin — Pete the Cat is a preschool / kindergarten fan favorite! This is one of the first Pete the Cat books and it is a fun, sing-songy story with less words than the later stories. You will get caught up in Pete’s enthusiasm for school and find yourselves singing along.
11. I Got the School Spiritby Connie Schofield-Morrison — want to get pepped up and excited for school? well then this is the book for you! The vibrant pictures and the sensory sound words will capture preschoolers’ attentions. “She hears the school spirit in the bus driving up the street–VROOM, VROOM!–and in the bell sounding in the halls–RING-A-DING!” It’s a fun, sensory experience to get excited for the new school year.
12. We Don’t Eat Our Classmatesby Ryan T. Higgins — Ryan T. Higgins is so talented as both an author and an illustrator. In this funny story, Penelope, a T. Rex, is nervous about her first day of school. Her nerves get the better of her during the day and she ends up eating a classmate — don’t worry, the student is fine! Penelope’s parents help ease her fears and she returns to school the next day, ready to try again!
13. If You Take a Mouse to School by Laura Numeroff — this is a fun book that goes through the typical school supplies/things you’d see in a classroom. Like the other books in this, it’s a silly story that little ones will enjoy. Bonus, it is a great introduction to sequencing and kids won’t even realize that they’re learning as they are so engrossed in the story.
14. School’s First Day of School by Adam Rex — A brand new elementary school is anxiously awaiting the first day of school! What will the children be like? What will they be doing at school? Will they like school? The school was filled with questions. On the first day of school, the school couldn’t believe how many children there were! The school learned what the different rooms were for and listened in on some jokes at lunch and lessons in the classroom and ended up having a fantastic day! Now the school can’t wait for everyone to back again tomorrow for more fun!
Check you library for these school-themed books! You can also purchase them on Amazon through the links provided. If you happen to purchase a book through my links, I get a small percentage of the sale to help support this site.
Activity for The Kissing Hand —
Make a hand and kiss out of Play-Doh to go along with the story!
