The Very Hungry Caterpillar is an all-time favorite book of my boys. I’ve read this book to them many, many times. There are a lot of kid activities, birthday party themes, and baby shower themes centered on this book. Today, I’m sharing a simple toddler activity you can do with your little one.
Book Summary: This story shows the life cycle from a caterpillar to a butterfly. After the baby caterpillar hatches from the egg, he is quite hungry. He looks for food and eats 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges, a bunch of junk food, and lastly, one green leaf. He then turns into a big caterpillar and wraps himself in a cocoon. After 2 weeks, he breaks open his cocoon and is a beautiful butterfly.
This toddler activity starts with making a simple caterpillar out of an empty parmesan can by adding googly eyes to it. You take small pictures of fruit and have your toddler feed it to the caterpillar. With my 20 month old, we practiced naming the fruit and talked about the colors. Although this story talks about giving the caterpillar junk food and a green leaf, I chose to leave that part out of this activity. I know the attention span of my 1 year old is short and I also wanted to focus on the fruit in this story. This activity was excellent for working on fine motor skills. He had to figure out how to get the card inside the mouth.
If your child knows their numbers, they could also practice counting the pieces of fruit.
After all the cards were in the container, my toddler shook it all up!
Next, we wrapped brown paper around the container to make the cocoon. Then I hid the caterpillar behind my back and brought out the picture of a butterfly.
This little boys loves butterflies, so he was excited to see it! He’s familiar with the story, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to see the butterfly.
I loved this activity because it focused on story sequence, fine motor skills, color naming, and counting. Plus he had fun!!
If you’d like a copy of the fruit and butterfly pictures, you can download your own PDF printable here
Does your little one like this book?
My son loves this book 🙂 We grew butterflies from caterpillars last year with a kit. It was AWESOME! 🙂 We also made a felt board story for the Very Hungry Caterpillar. 🙂
That is SO much fun, Cheryl! I can’t wait to try that sometime with my boys. Love the felt story board idea, too! Thanks so much for sharing.
I realize this post was active many moons ago, but if you or anyone happens to see this and can tell me a good place to order a butterfly raising kit from? I’ve been wanting to do that for so long!
We LOVE this butterfly kit (affiliate link): http://amzn.to/22yKc7C We will be doing this every spring because it was amazing to watch the process.
This is such a brilliant idea I shared it on The Sunday showcase as well!
Oh my goodness! How adorable is this. My 3 year old is learning all about butterflies and that includes caterpillars.
Dollie @ Teachers of Good Things recently posted…How to Save Money on Toys for the Kids in Your Life
Thanks, Dollie!! Yes, so many kiddos love butterflies. Hope your son will love this book and activity!
I love this activity! The caterpillar you made is so endearing. It jumps off the page ready to be fed. y kids would love it. I am pinning this to my The Very Hungry Caterpillar Board. I want to try this too!
Theresa (Capri + 3) recently posted…Artsy Play Wednesday–Fun with Bugs
I L O V E THIS!! You truly are awesome for sharing this. Cannot wait to do with my Bugaboo :))!!!