Looking for some The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities and ideas to add in lots of fun and learning? Here are some of our favourite ways to use one of our all time favourite story books.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities
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Explore the colours and textures in The Very Hungry Caterpillar with some beautiful butterfly craft ideas.
Talk about the feelings in the book. How might the caterpillar feel when he pops out of the egg? When he’s eaten all that food? When he’s inside his cocoon? When he emerges as a butterfly?
Encourage fine motor skills by taking a string caterpillar for a munch around one nice green leaf made from a piece of card with holes punched in.
Encourage some imagining. If the children could change into any kind of animal, what would they like to be? How would they move? What would they eat? Maybe they could draw themselves as this creature, with a photograph of their face added on?
Have fun with some gross motor skills, using your body to creep like a caterpillar, snuggle in a cocoon and then flutter like a butterfly.
Explore the food in the book and taste test some of the food: what tastes best, pickles or cherry pie? You can carry out a survey to see which food is the favourite and graph the results. Or play a guessing game, wearing a blindfold and smelling and tasting the food and trying to guess what they all are without peeping.
Have some fun with printing, using cut apples, pears and oranges to dip in paint and create some designs.
Mix in some maths by using your fruit prints to make some cards, and them counting out the right number of fruits to match the story and ordering them in ascending / descending order.
Eat a caterpillar! Invite the children into the kitchen to prepare their own caterpillar lunch, using cucumber and tomato slices to create the body.
Talk about the metamorphosis of the caterpillar to a butterfly and compare it with the children. What did they look like when they were a baby? How will they change when they grow up? Use pictures from magazines or photographs of their own family to make a ‘growing up’ timeline of butterflies and people.
Practise some memory skills by playing Kim’s Game. Lay out some of the objects in the story, cover them with a cloth and remove one. Can the children spot which one is missing?
We love to use a book as a springboard for lots of different aspects of play and learning. Once you start thinking about the possibilities it’s easy to take something the children love and weave in literacy, maths, role play, physical skills and learning about the world around us.
Love the cucumber and tomato caterpillar!!
Georgia 🙂
Thanks Love and Lollipops – he’s cute, isn’t he?!
I love this cucumber caterpillar too.
Too cute to eat 😀
I`ll make it for dinner tonight 🙂
I love all your caterpillar ideas! Every Tuesday I do a story time with craft idea and I have “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” on my list in a couple weeks. I will have to use some of your ideas. Thank you.
I love the cucumber caterpillar plate! Wish my little guy would eat that… lol! you can see our’s here.
so clever and adorable!
Cathy – you are a genius! So many great ideas. Love the cucumber caterpillar, we’ll be inviting one to join us for lunch tomorrow! 😉
Hello! Been loving your posts to celebrate Eric Carle! You inspired me to add my felt story activity of TVHC on my blog today 🙂 Cheers and thanks!
Super cute veggie caterpillar! Great activities.
My 2 year old loved the caterpillars I made him for tea today, inspired by your photo here. I cut an omelette into circles with a biscuit cutter, and alternated this with large carrot slices and courgette slices, then added a potato smiley face head!
We made daddy, mummy and toddler caterpillars on the plate (3 descending a little in size). I have a great photo but not sure I can post it on here.
Kids sure love food that looks fun and this looks very fun! 🙂
This was a great idea for Eric Carle week, to inspire others to create! This was a favorite play post from It’s Playtime last week! And I’m featuring the Best of It’s Playtime 🙂 Come and play again today!
Thanks Jamie – Eric Carle week was lots of fun!
Oh, such lovely and fun ideas!!!
Isn’t Eric Carle fun? I love the cucumber idea- now only if I can get my kids to eat them! Thanks for sharing on The Sunday Showcase!
I love these ideas! I’m going to bookmark this page!
Very pleased you like them Dusty. Thanks for stopping by.
Love all your ideas!! Great way to approach from so many different angles 🙂 attaching a post from last spring for more ideas …
I love these ideas! Thanks for sharing them.
I came by your site via Pinterest and have included this post in my weekly round-up of great pins on my blog. If you’d like to have a look, you can see it here.
Cheers,
Kelly at Little Green
Thanks for including me in your round up Kelly 🙂