Feeding "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"

Almost all children love Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This simple yet brilliant book teaches children about numbers, sequence, days of week, life cycle of a butterfly, and so much more.


After reading the book to your pre-school child several times, and your child seems to be getting familiar with what the caterpillar eats on different days, that's when you can start "feeding" the caterpillar.


Materials Needed:

• Constructions papers of various colors (best according to the colors of food in the story)
• 9 Disposable Styorofoam/Paper Bowls
• Paint of different colors to paint the bowls with. Crayons will also work just fine.
• 2-3 feet string to connect the bowls
• Glue (Extra) Craft pipe cleaners of various colors for the mouth and sticking-out eyes.
• Wiggly eyes or you can just draw the eyes

Making the Caterpillar: Tell your child you are going to make the very hungry caterpillar together by coloring the outside of the bowls first either with paint or crayons. Both paint and crayon work well on paper bowls but only crayons would work well on styrofoam bowls. Glue two of the bowls together to be the head of the caterpillar then glue on the pipe cleaners and wiggly eyes (see picture below). Then write Monday to Saturday on one side of each of the bowl with marker.

Feeding the Caterpillar: (Either you or/and your child if she can cut with scissors) Cut out shapes of the different fruit according to the numbers mentioned in the book. They need to be small enough to fit inside a bowl. Then have your child "feed" the caterpillar according to the sequence from the story. Ask your child what the caterpillar eats on Monday and ask her to glue the right number of that fruit inside the Monday bowl. One apple on Monday, Two oranges on Tuesday, and so on and so forth for the rest of the bowls. You might like to practice it a few times with the child to get the right number of the different fruit in the correct bowls before you actually glue the fruit inside the bowl.

Connect the Caterpillar: Poke a small hole on the edge of each bowl and connect them together with a string (as shown) and hang up the "very well-fed" caterpillar by your child's door!