4 Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities

Earlier this summer we hosted a Very Hungry Caterpillar playdate. I planned four fun caterpillar crafts and activities. A few of these ideas were shared in our Simple Bug Activities post and two are finally getting shared in this post!

If you want to host your very own Very Hungry Caterpillar playdate or Mommy and Me Book Club all you need to do is read The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and do some or all of these activities with your little ones and friends. 

Here are a few of the activities I planned for our little get together...

 1. Make Balloon Printed Caterpillars

We got this idea from Meet the Dubiens

You can make your caterpillars look just like the ones in the book or make crazy multicolored ones!

2. Make Caterpillar hats!

We got this idea from ItMom

This was the first activity we did when the kids arrived at our playdate. I pre-cut all of the materials for this so that the kids just had to glue and then the moms stapled and then were ready to listen to the story with their hats on!

3. Make some caterpillar patterns and do some caterpillar counting with M&Ms

For this activity you need a marker, a green cardstock leaf or two, and some M&Ms

I drew several little caterpillars on each leaf. The kids could use a pre-drawn one or draw their own. They got to decide how long their caterpillars were and then they had to draw them. Once they were drawn, they had to count the caterpillar pieces and match an M&M to each segment to make an M&M caterpillar.

Younger kids just had fun counting up the number of circles on the pre-drawn leaves and then matching the correct number of M&Ms to their leaf.

Once they were done they got to be hungry caterpillars themselves and eat all their M&Ms! Yum!

4. Make a caterpillar cereal & pipe cleaner snack

For this activity you need colored cereal Os, glue, cardstock, scissors, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and a hole puncher.

I pre-cut the caterpillar heads and hole-punched them and pre-tied the caterpillar pipe cleaners so that each had an antennae on top.

When the kids arrived they just added googly eyes to their cardstock oval. Next they threaded the head onto their pipe cleaner (through the hole punched hole) and then they added colorful cereal Os in patterns onto the pipe cleaner. Some didn't get very far before they inhaled their entire caterpillar and had to start again 🙂

This was definitely a cute and yummy snack!

Do you love The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle?

Have you done any other caterpillar themed crafts or activities? If so, come share them in the comments!