Classroom Fun: The Very Hungry Caterpillar {wall display, book, and activity}

Returning to the classroom after holiday break is exciting.  I can’t wait to see all the excited kiddos lined up ready to share the silly stories of their adventures.  I’m also excited to get right to work with a few classroom projects.  I am looking forward to sharing pictures of our January classroom fun.

I realized I had not yet shared my Very Hungry Caterpillar classroom activity here yet. This project was done specifically for Thanksgiving but could be used for any holiday or season.  For January it would be fun to change the question to “what is your favorite food to eat on a cold day?”.

I started by asking all the kids about their favorite Thanksgiving food.  Later at home I turned their answers into a big caterpillar wall display.  I do not have a template for the caterpillar but had no trouble looking at the book cover and cutting similar shapes.  The illustrations and the colors in the book give you so much flexibility with paper options.  All the paper used was from my scrap pile (any shade of green works for the caterpillar body).

I altered the book with the responses from the kids in class.  I used different textures to add dimension to the pages.  I also wrote new words to add to the story.  All the changes were secured by painters tape and easily peeled off later with out damaging the book.

I read the story the last day before Thanksgiving break.  In our story the caterpillar ate one of everything found at our Thanksgiving party before he starts to feel sick.

The kids loved seeing the customized book while I read the story.  I copied all the pages of the book and bound them for each student to take home.  The black and white copies worked out very well because it gave us a fun afternoon activity – coloring our books!

The kids in the classroom loved everything about this activity!

I’m linking this post here.