Eric Carle’s celebrated classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar is an all-time favourite storybook for young kids. Kids love hearing it read again and again. Doing fun arts and crafts activities with your child is a great way to complement a favourite story – and these activities can help teach your child valuable skills and concepts.
There are lots of online resources with craft ideas for kids, and these ideas can inspire you to try new things with your little ones. Here are two fun activities that you can do alongside The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Make a Coloured Caterpillar
If your child loves this story, perhaps you could work together to make their very own caterpillar! You can recycle
Materials:
- Empty egg cartons
- Googly eyes
- Green and orange pipe cleaners
- Coloured markers, pens, or paints
- Scissors
- White glue
Instructions:
1) Cut the egg cartons in half lengthwise.
2) Punch holes along the sides for the legs and at the front end of the egg cartons for the antennae.
3) Use the markers, pens, or paint to colour the caterpillar.
4) Cut twelve 2-inch strips from the green pipe cleaners, and two 2-inch strips from the orange pipe cleaner.
5) Insert the green and orange pipe cleaners into the holes.
6) Glue on the googly eyes.
7) Now you have your very own caterpillar! Encourage your child to make up his or her own stories about the caterpillar, using this caterpillar as a prop.
Make Props for the Story
To make storytelling more interesting, you can put together other props associated with the story. You can either let your kids draw and colour each item or cut colour pictures from old books and magazines – you don’t need to find all the actual items!
Have your child draw or find pictures of an apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, five oranges, one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, one slice of watermelon, and one green leaf. Think about laminating the images or covering them with clear contact paper, so that they will last longer.
This craft not only provides hours of fun for you and your kids, but it is also an easy way to teach your children the days of the week, counting, sequencing, nutrition and science (stages of a butterfly). The use of props is particularly useful if your kids are not interested in reading – the props will help bring the story to life and provide visual and tactile stimuli.