Very Hungry Caterpillar lessons

If there is one book almost everyone knows for preschool, it’s Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar. I remember reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar in preschool (I should say having it read to me), and I remember reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar when I taught school and we studied butterflies, and of course, now we had our very own Very Hungry Caterpillar unit. It made me a happy mom.

Teaching the Very Hungry Caterpillar to two ages

My boys are four, and my daughter is two. That means they are capable of very different things:

For my boys I expected them to do the cutting themselves.

For Princess, I cut the caterpillars and butterflies into strips, and she had to cut the pictures apart, one straight cut. Perfect for a two-year-old.

Both sets of children worked on tracing letters, and pattern matching. The boys were obviously doing better at tracing.

Many of the projects shown today come from Carissa’s AWESOME tot school pack. [Future Ticia here, since I wrote this post she has released an updated version. The projects I refer to are the individual pages on the side, not the updated 2012 pack].

Supplies used in our Very Hungry Caterpillar activities

(this post contains affiliate links)

The book (obviously): Very Hungry Caterpillar

scissors, glue (I highly recommend ordering these smaller bottles and refilling them because they are just the perfect size for preschool, also when someone decides to see what happens when they empty the bottle, there is not as much to empty), construction paper, laminator (the one I had has since been discontinued, and now I just go down to Mardel, they’ve got good prices, this is the one everyone raves about), fine motor skills tools (or various different scooping tools and tongs)

Future Ticia 2024 adds in, if I’d thought about it I might have also added in something with a butterfly life cycle printable, to pull in a more official science lesson.

Hands-on Very Hungry Caterpillar lessons

First, we started off by putting the caterpillars and butterflies in order by size.  This takes a lot of concentration, and of course, that means sticking your tongue out.

Batman completing his Dot-to-dot found here. Both of the boys loved working on this easy dot-to-dot.

Not that it’s obvious yet, but this is a caterpillar to feed. Right now it just looks like a milk carton, imagine it painted and with eyes (yes, the version in the picture of this updated post is a pig. I am aware of this, but I can’t find the caterpillar version). This was very popular, and a great fine motor skill activity. They got to practice both with spoons, tongs and then pouring the pom poms back out. I vaguely based this idea off a much more expensive Montessori scooping activity I saw at a teacher store. I didn’t want to pay $20 for it though, hence born the homemade version.

This was a great activity from Carissa’s tot pack. It could be used so many different ways. I think she planned to use it as a book, it could also be a memory game, we laminated it and used it as alphabet tracers, can you tell which one the four-year-old did and which one was done by a two-year-old?

We went through and worked on this fun symmetry and pattern matching activity. I cannot find where I originally got it from, I’m sorry about that.

And of course, we made egg carton caterpillars, and completed pictures to come soon (yeah, I have no clue what happened to those, I’ll have to remake this cute craft). Superman actually used multiple colors, this is a big deal for him. We had a blast and didn’t even get to all the activities I thought of.

Some more Very Hungry Caterpillar lessons and crafts

There are a lot of amazing bloggers with Very Hungry Caterpillar posts, check out some of these other bloggers:

• Act it out
• bring in your older kids with chalk art lesson
• super in-depth literature study
• lapbook

More Book and Activity posts

• Koala Lou cleaning Olympics
• Pecos Bill book and activity
• Mortimer’s First Garden book and activity
• Legend of the Bluebonnet book and activity
• Leaf Men book and activity