To say that I was nervous about doing this activity would be the understatement of the year. We used to do “The Very Hungry Kindergartener” booklet, but I thought that we could make it a little more hands-on. I wanted them to put the months in order, follow multi-step directions and flex their stamina muscles.
Too much?
I’m not going to lie, before we started I was envisioning myself running around the room assembling mangled caterpillars. I actually started sweating as I was reading the story. The Kindergarten Teacher with her head cut off scenario probably would have been the case at the beginning of the year. It’s not that I don’t think my kids can do it. I know they can. It’s just that tiny bit {ahem…full blown} of OCD that made me doubt.
Bad teacher.
They were fabulous.
I mean, they blew me out of the water.
First {obvioulsy}, we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Then, I copied the activities on light green and dark green paper to give the caterpillar the AB pattern of light green/dark green.
Don’t need to tell you how long that took me to figure out…
We brainstormed different kinds of food they could add to their caterpillar. It started in August where they ate 1 thing, then September 2…and so on.
You get it. You’re smart people.
Then we cut.
And cut…and cut.
Here is where the activity trumped the booklet for me. They actually had to order the months, follow the AB pattern and had to check their work to ensure sure that it made sense. The booklet is great if you are short on time. When you have them do this step, ask them to arrange their caterpillar so that it will fit on the 9×12 piece of construction paper. If they try to make their caterpillar go straight across, it won’t fit.
There will be tears and glue fingers involved.
True story.
Above or below the caterpillar have them write “The Very Hungry Kindergartener” or “The Very Hungry First Grader” in pencil. If they had time, I let them go back and trace over the letters with a black marker and add legs antennae to their caterpillars.
The final step was the dot paint.
Here is one of the final caterpillars!
They look so cute hanging outside the classroom.
You are more than welcome to snag this idea. If you are like me and would just like to save the trouble, you can grab it here. I got a request to add a cover for first grade so that’s in there too!
