We put up a picture of the life cycle of a butterfly on our noticeboard.  The children went over to it on their own accord and the older ones who had done this before explained it to the younger ones.

Cup Cakes

125g self raising flour

125g margarine

125g caster sugar

2 eggs

Combine the caster sugar and margarine until the mixture is smooth then add the two eggs and whisk.  Finally add the self raising flour and fold all the ingredients together.  Spoon into 12 cupcake cases.  Bake on 180 degrees C for 10-12 minutes.  Cool and decorate.

We used ready coloured roll out icing in green, white, purple and orange.  I broke off small pieces for each child and showed them the example that I'd made of a small white egg on a leaf, a caterpillar and a butterfly.  I bought edible eyes from Amazon (Wilton Candy Eyeball 25g £3.99).

The children rolled out their pieces of icing accordingly and placed them on top of their cakes.  Each one was different.  The children learned to roll, push, taste, count, learn colours, follow instructions and had a great sense of achievement when they showed their cakes off at the end.

The children helped me to make the game before we started to play with it.  Initially I put the food pieces out in the correct order and read the story with each child taking a turn to post the correct food into the caterpillar's mouth.  Later we just mixed up the foods and the children had to hunt to find them.  When I thought we'd finished playing the game I got up and went into another part of the room.  P (aged nearly 4) picked up the book and began turning pages making up the story as he went.  The other children followed his lead and posted the correct foods into the caterpillar's mouth.  I enjoyed just watching them taking turns reading and remembering a lot from the story.

1kg bag of white rice

4 tsp white spirit

half a tube of squeezy food colouring

Pour the whole bag of rice into a bowl, add four teaspoons of white vinegar and squeeze half the tube of your desired food colouring in.  Using a metal fork mix, mix, mix until all the food colouring is mixed in.

Line a baking tray with baking parchment and pour out the rice mixture onto the tray.  Leave to dry for half an hour, mix it up with your hand and leave for another 10 minutes or so.  It dries quite quickly and is safe and ready to use.

On this occasion I used the sensory box in conjunction with our Hungry Caterpillar theme so we hid plastic food items from the story under the rice and the children had to dig around to find them.  I read the story and they had to find the correct item of food.  I also put teaspoons, scoops, stacking cups etc into the box.  As the week progressed I could just close the lid of the box and move it to the side of the room or put it in another location.  The children put the diggers and some stones into it and made a building site.  Another day they put the tea set in the box and used the rice as tea for pouring and on plates for eating and into the cup cake cases for baking.  Endless possibilities.

We also used the coloured rice on mirrored trays where the children enjoyed writing in it, standing in it with no socks on, making a gap in the rice so they could see themselves etc etc etc.  I just let their imaginations run wild.