BOOK NAME: THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR
AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: ERIC CARLE
PAGES: 22
PUBLISHER: PUFFIN BOOKS
AGE RECOMMENDED: BABIES TO 2.5+
A 50-year-old classic book hasn’t lost its charm and still entertains millions of kids around the globe. The author beautifully explained the metamorphosis/life cycle of the butterfly in an interesting way.
The story starts with a newborn caterpillar who is very hungry. He starts to munch the food he finds along. He ate different fruits on different days of the week. The illustrations are such a way, the caterpillar will pass through each page, and you can leave your finger in the hole of each page to help him to munch. The fruits didn’t fill his hunger and he started to eat junk food. That night he had a terrible stomach ache and couldn’t sleep, and morning he ate a big juicy leaf and felt much better. He is now a huge fat caterpillar and he started to build a home called cocoon for him. After a few days, he pierced out of the cocoon to become a beautiful butterfly.
The illustrations are mind-blowing and the cute caterpillar will never fail to amuse the little ones.
A beautiful story that balances fiction and non-fiction for kids in a simple way. A lot of things we can discuss with the kids.
Few may be,
- Difference between junk and healthy food.
- What happens when we eat too much junk?
- Why did the author mention caterpillar as hungry always?
- The life cycle of a butterfly.
- Simple counting activity.
- The book teaches days of the week.
- Different types of fruits.
- The bright colours of the book pop.
- How caterpillar ate different food(A question to discuss with a picky eater)
- How caterpillar accepted the new change.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s Finger Puppet book
A beautiful puppet book for babies and toddlers, where you can mimic the story in your own way. This puppet book focuses on counting, but we used to play with this puppet book and end up in a riot of laughter.
Benefits of Puppet book,
- Improves their attention span by following the direction of the puppet.
- Puppets add life to a story
- Enhances the kid’s curiosity
- Grabs the kids attention and easy to make conversation with a kid.
- Helps in widening their imagination
- The puppet play may help the child to narrate their own story if they use it for their pretend play.
- The puppet play helps the kid to be expressive and enrich their vocabulary.
- If the kid uses the puppets, it develops their fine motor skills.
- It develops sequencing skill
The internet is filled with crafts of the very hungry caterpillar. Few feasible activity suggestions will be,
- Paper plate caterpillar
- Sensory bin using beans and life cycle cards/figurines
- Playdough metamorphosis
- Story stones
- Feed the hungry caterpillar
- Nature-inspired Life cycle
- Tie and dye Butterfly using tissue paper.
- I spy games using printables.
- Food art
- Lacing activity
- Make caterpillar using dot markers
- Pipe cleaner caterpillar and butterfly
- Butterfly suncatcher
- Egg carton caterpillar
We did an easy paper plate caterpillar for our letter C unit study and it came out really well. Updating the pictures of that really soon.
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