Consequences Play

Katie is continuously working on how to deal with the reality that there are consequences to decision... and not particularly nice consequences to bad decisions. Most recently her thoughts and play with regard to this has focused in on food. It started when we read The Hungry Caterpillar. On Saturday, the caterpillar eats a bunch of junk food and then he feels sick. The next day he eats one nice, green leaf, and he feels much better. This really tickled Katie. She wanted to read that part over and over. Then we got her some new play dough, and the first thing she made was a caterpillar with food for it. I said, "Let's make a green leaf!" And she said, "No, let's make a piece of cherry pie!" (That's one of the junk food pieces the caterpillar eats in the book). She made a bunch of junk food for the caterpillar and then he ate it all up, and then he felt so sick!!! THEN he ate a nice, green leaf and felt much better. She is playing this over and over again. I think she is actually a little confused, because she doesn't believe the caterpillar can make a cocoon until it eats all the junk and gets sick, like in the book... I attempted to tell her otherwise, but she is really stuck on this. Maybe I can find another book on caterpillars to show her it doesn't really work that way??? In any case, what she is really working on is the fact that the caterpillar WANTS to eat all this junk food, but the end result is getting sick. She talks about it at meal times. This morning the caterpillar made the decision NOT to eat the cookies before lunch time, just like his mommy told him. :-)

Hungry Caterpillar

This evening we did a play dough acting-out of Eric Carle's The Hungry Caterpillar. Katie made a play dough caterpillar, and then she made a bunch of food for it - I helped with ideas for food while washing the dishes. And then we told the story, with the caterpillar "eating" the food. By the time he had eaten all the food Katie had made for him, he was, indeed, a "big, fat caterpillar" ready to make a cocoon. Then it nibbled a hole in the cocoon, and... out popped a beautiful butterfly!

Katie's Favorites

I thought I'd make a list of Katie's favorite activities that she can do by herself when I need her to play alone. Its funny that we have all these nice toys, but the favorites are all inexpensive classics:

1. Bubbles
2. Play dough
3. Paint a picture
4. Roller Skate
5. Blocks
6. Tumble on/off furniture