The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Buy This Book * More books by Eric Carle

A much-loved classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has won over millions of readers with its vivid and colourful collage illustrations and its deceptively simple, hopeful story.

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

English

• Can you write a similar story about a ‘very hungry’ animal? What happens to it?
• Retell the story from the point of view of the caterpillar. Why was it so hungry? How did it feel after eating so much?
• Can you use alliteration to describe some of the food that is eaten? (e.g. lovely lollipops, scrumptious strawberries).
• Read the story and try to retell it to a friend. Can you remember all of the food that was eaten in the correct order?
• Create your own puppet show where you perform the story to an audience.
• Find the different types of food that the caterpillar ate in the word search (see Resources below).
• Here is another video in which the author talks about the inspiration behind the story:

Maths

• Use Venn / Carroll diagrams to sort the foods that the caterpillar eats.
• Count the total number of foods that were eaten by the caterpillar. How many of these were fruit / vegetable / contained meat etc.?

Science

• Sort the foods that the caterpillar eats in different ways. Which ones are healthy / unhealthy? Which are processed / unprocessed?
• Think of a healthy / unhealthy meal for another hungry caterpillar.
• Find out about the life cycles of caterpillars / butterflies. Find out about the life cycles of other animals.
• Learn about metamorphosis. Find out about other animals that undergo metamorphosis.
• Watch a video which shows the metamorphosis of a butterfly, e.g.

Computing

• Make a stop-motion animation which retells the story.
• Use software to make a computer game, which is based on the book, e.g. where the caterpillar has to collect the correct types of food.

Design Technology

• The book has holes cut into some of the pages. Try to make another story / book which might also have holes cut out of the illustrations. What could the holes be for?
• Make a pop-up book which retells the story.

Art

• Create a collage of a big, fat caterpillar!
• Create another collage showing the beautiful butterfly.
• Look at photographs of butterflies and paint your own. You could try folding a piece of paper in half and painting one half of a butterfly on one side. Then fold the paper over, press it down and open it out to reveal the full butterfly.
• Cut a hole out of a piece of paper and create a picture around it. What could the hole represent? A window in a beautiful building? A missing piece of a puzzle? A gigantic hole in the ground?

Downloads: