The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a great book to introduce to children during spring and/or early summer.   Children find this book amusing as they watch the caterpillar eat his way through an apple on Monday, two pears on Tuesday, three plums on Wednesday, and so on . . . until he is fat and has a stomachache.  Then the caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly. 

As I stated earlier this week, I’ve been cleaning out some things in my basement.  While I was cleaning, I came across some cute activities that I did with my preschool class last year while we learned about caterpillars and butterflies.

At DLTK (one of my favorite sites), I found a sequencing activity.  You can print off the sequencing cards in color or black and white.  I chose to print them in black and white and let the children color them.  I worked with the children to arrange the cards in order, according to how they occurred in the story.

I really enjoyed making these butterflies with the children, but they were time consuming and messy!  Aren’t they cute, though?  The wings are made out of the child’s footprints and the center is cut from brown construction paper.

Some other ideas- introduce the letter “b” for butterfly and/or “c” for caterpillar, talk about the days of the week, discuss food and nutrition.

There are crafts and activities that can be done with every book and story.  These help to enrich the child’s learning experience and make them more meaningful.  I plan to list other caterpillar and butterfly activities at my other site, Little Fun; Little Learning.  I hope you’ll drop by.