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Kids of all ages will love this The Very Hungry Caterpillar Craft! It’s great for building motor skills while creating a fun story prop!
Spring is a great time to add The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities to your lesson plans. As caterpillars and butterflies begin to be seen around your area, add this popular book to your reading list.
Book-based crafts are a lot of fun, because they allow you to bring the story to life with your students. Preschoolers may need a little help with this caterpillar craft, but older kids should be able to do it on their own.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Craft
This Very Hungry Caterpillar craft is perfect for storytelling and imaginative play. While this caterpillar mimics the one from Eric Carle’s books, it can be used to retell and act out any caterpillar themed story you may read with your kids this spring.
What You’ll Need
• scissors
• glue gun
What You’ll Do
Cut one jumbo popsicle stick in half, and another stick at about 1” from the end.
Arrange the pieces to make a wiggly caterpillar with the small popsicle piece for the head. Use hot glue to adhere the pieces together.
If you’re doing this craft in a classroom setting, you might want to go ahead and have the first two steps complete. This will save you a lot of time.
Create an “M” shape out of the blue pipe cleaner, making the middle point flat.
Squish this shape together to form the caterpillar’s antenna. Wrap the long end of the blue pipe cleaner around head of caterpillar to attach it to the popsicle stick.
Wrap the rest of the head in red pipe cleaners, going around the tip to form a rounded shape.
To create the colors of the classic Hungry Caterpillar, use different colored pipe cleaners to wrap the body: Green, light green, yellow green, yellow and a bit of blue.
Take 3 or 4 different colors at a time. Start at the back and wrap around. You can go back and separate the colors a bit to make sure there is a variety showing.
To make the eyes, cut two small pieces of yellow pipe cleaner and bend them in half. Use a green marker to color the inside part. Hot glue these to the face with a small piece of green pipe cleaner for the mouth.
Your Hungry Caterpillar is ready to eat it’s way into your next birthday party or classroom celebration!
Enhance Your Activity Time
Lacing toys are great for building fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. This Hungry Caterpillar Wooden Lacing Set is perfect to use alongside this story. Kids can lace the objects as they are mentioned in the story.
Children can use the Hungry Caterpillar felt pieces to learn and/or identify foods in the story, retell the story, or make their own pretend play stories. This felt set can be used for independent play, small group activities, and for speech therapy.
More Book-Based Crafts
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