The Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of the first board books I bought my oldest son. I have such fond memories of him on my lap, pointing at the pictures that it will always be a favourite book. I still have it memorized!There are so many activities that can be used with the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar that it was hard to pick just a few!

I found this great idea for creating a Butterfly Life Cycle here. We used dried pasta, beans, leaves, and twigs on a paper plate.

Our The Very Hungry Caterpillar themed muffin tin lunch tray included:

cucumber
rice cakes
cheese
meat
crackers
cupcake (the ones the kids decorated the day before when we read “If You Give a Cat a Cupcake“)

The kids used this circle muffin tin lunch to create their own edible caterpillars.caterpillar counting practise

The kids did caterpillar counting using pompoms (find the printables on Confessions of a Homeschooler). The kids had several other caterpillar activities in their workboxes from there as well.

caterpillar colours sheet from Making Learning Fun

butterfly craft using tissue paper

hungry caterpillar Do-a-dot pages

the very hungry caterpillar alphabet dot-to-dot from Making Learning Fun

butterfly colour-by-number from Making Learning Fun

If you are looking for butterfly ideas, we also did several others including butterfly life cycle stamps during our “Bb” theme week. We also raised our own butterflies in the Spring and did some accompanying activities for that.

The book easily lends itself to a variety of activities. Even a trip for an ice cream cone can be tied back to the book!

On the flip side of that, it can also be a book that you use to promote healthy eating. Talk to your kids about their food habits and eating how they were meant to eat. Discuss how eating a green leaf is healthy for a caterpillar and therefore, it’s what made him feel better.

This book is also excellent for teaching or reinforcing the days of the week. After you read it through once, you can read it again but have the kids shout out the days of the week as they come up.