Tag: caterpillars

Make a Changing Caterpillar

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Butterfly (9)

After a recent documentary on Bugs, Travis is in love with caterpillars. It was perfect timing for a story unit on caterpillars turning into butterflies in our latest Ranger Rick Jr. We downloaded the template and put together this neat felt project that illustrates metamorphosis beautifully.

A note on the project: unless your kids are at the upper age range of Ranger Rick Jr., grown-ups will likely need to assemble the caterpillar and butterfly. But then the kids can play with it!

First, use the template to cut the large butterfly shape from black felt. Cut the small butterfly shape from orange felt, and glue onto the black. (You’ll need fabric glue or a hot glue gun). Set aside.

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To make the caterpillar, cut a rectangle from black felt. Cut a long strip from felt for the antenna (Travis wanted blue instead of black). Fold the strip into a V and glue onto the top of the black body. Add two stripes each of yellow, white, and black felt. Glue on googly eyes (Travis wanted 3 eyes, not 2, hence the odd appearance!) and then 2 eyes onto the back.

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For the final component, cut the large butterfly shape from green felt. Glue onto the back of the black butterfly; this will be your chrysalis.

To put it all together, attach 2 Velcro dots to the body of the caterpillar on the black stripes, and line up with Velcro dots on the butterfly’s body.

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Place additional Velcro dots on the left top and bottom of the black butterfly wing, and then on the opposite sides of the green “chrysalis” so you can fold it closed.

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Now it was time for Mr. Caterpillar to crawl into his butterfly wings and fold himself up into a cozy chrysalis.

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Travis loved it! Note: You can also attach a string to the green felt so the chrysalis can hang.

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Open back up again for the butterfly transformation.

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Pipe Cleaner Caterpillar

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I was delighted to see Travis pretending this morning that he was on a “nature walk” around our apartment, taking along a bucket and finding “treasures.” One of the items we never found on a true nature walk this fall was a wooly bear caterpillar – so we decided to make a few to find around the house!

Wrap pipe cleaners around a pencil tightly, then simply slide off. I only had brown pipe cleaners at home, which served our purpose perfectly, but feel free to be inventive with colors: shiny caterpillars, multi-colored caterpillars, whatever suits your child’s fancy!

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Travis immediately was wiggling them around the “forest floor.”

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He then stretched out some of the coils so they could be worms instead – I love when his imagination takes a game in a direction I hadn’t anticipated.

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He then wanted a turn coiling a pipe cleaner around the pencil, which was tricky for him, but he loved trying it out.

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We ended up gluing googly eyes on just a couple of the caterpillars, for an extra adorable touch.

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Tablecloth Clip Creatures

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Tablecloth Clip (6)

A recent dot painting extravaganza reminded me that it’s useful to cover our work space (also Travis’s table for eating), when a craft gets particularly messy; a tablecloth clipped onto a table does the job in a pinch – so why not make the clips to hold it functional and adorable?

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To craft these little creatures, we used small pom poms and clothespins. Travis actually lost interest in forming insects quite quickly when he discovered that he could pick up pom poms with the clothespins – but this was such great practice for his fine motor skills that I was happy to let him continue!

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Meanwhile, we ended up with a variety of bugs, including a butterfly, caterpillar, and bee. Older kids will definitely love mapping out how their creatures look, and selecting which materials work best for which insect. Construction paper made for easy wings, and pipe cleaner pieces were perfect for antennae.

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We’ll be busy and buzzy as bees at our craft table now!

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When not in use, our little creatures love hanging out at the windowsill.

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Counting Caterpillars

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COunting Caterpillar (7)

Ever since our Number Crate arrived from Koala Crate, Travis can’t get enough of counting anything and everything – magnets on the fridge, berries in his bowl, chairs in a waiting room. These adorable fuzzy caterpillars let us have crafty fun with his interest!

While he napped, I cut out “caterpillars” from poster board, increasingly long in length. The caterpillars can then be numbered 1 through 10 (or even higher, although we only went up to 6, because we ran out of pom poms!).

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If you cut the caterpillars from green construction paper, even better! Luckily Travis didn’t mind coloring them in with the help of a fat green crayon.

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Then it was time to make our caterpillars fuzzy. I asked him to tell me the number on each one, and once he supplied the answer, he could proudly apply that many blobs of glue. This part of course was super fun.

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Each blob of glue got a pom pom, until we had correctly filled in all our caterpillars.

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Let them dry and then have fun playing with your furry little friends!

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Color Match Caterpillar

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Color Match Caterpillar (4)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a much-loved book around here, so after a cute read of it this week, we made our own caterpillar, and “fed” him fruit – the game involved both imagination and a nice lesson in color sorting!

Preschoolers may want to put together their own caterpillar, but I largely assembled ours for Travis, gluing down circles of different color construction paper for the body, drawing on a face, and adding pipe cleaner antennas and googly eyes.

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Once the glue dries, set out the caterpillar along with pom poms in colors that match your circles. We had “blueberries” “strawberries” “oranges” “lemons” and “grapes” for our caterpillar to eat.

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To be honest, Travis wasn’t that into getting the correctly colored pom poms onto the corresponding circle, but he did think our caterpillar was very cute!

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