Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar Craft

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a firm favourite childhood story. The book is ideal for science lessons (life cycles), PSED (healthy eating), learning the days of the week and reinforcing basic numeracy skills. The story can also help develop fine motor skills with our simple Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar Craft.

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Materials needed to create the Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar Craft

* Wooden Clothespins / pegs

* Green paint – we used two different shades

* Ziploc Bag

* Red paint

* Craft Foam – yellow, green, blue and purple

* Polystyrene circle or card – anything that you can attach the pegs to and cut afterwards

* PVA Craft Glue or Craft Foam Glue would be better

How to make the Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar Craft

1. “Paint” the clothespins by placing the clothespins into a ziploc bag and add green paint. We used two bags and two different shades of green paint. Although we used green poster paint, since creating our caterpillar I have discovered acrylic paints gives better coverage.

2. Squish the paint around inside the zip-loc bag so that the clothespins are adequately covered.

3. Remove the clothespins and place them on a tray lined with baking paper. Allow time for them to dry completely.

4. To make the Hungry Caterpillars head paint two clothespins with red paint. Cut two large ovals from the yellow craft foam and two smaller ovals from the green craft foam to make the eyes. Use the purple and blue craft foam to create the antennae. Secure these in place with PVA Craft Glue or Craft Foam Glue.

There are two different ways for attaching the clothespegs to make the Hungry Caterpillar.

Option 1 – use a recycled polystyrene circle. This way your child has something large to hold onto as they add the pegs. Once the pegs are attached you will need to cut around polystrene circle.

Option 2 – cut a piece of cardboard into a stretched C shape (see the video below for a better description). You may wish to wrap green electrical tape around the cardboard.

See in action how to make the Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar:

Simple Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar Craft

It is hard to believe that our Clothespin Hungry Caterpillar is now 2 1/2 years old.

It is displayed in our dining room and this week it even went to Adam’s school as they are reading the story. Our simple craft was a great fine motor skill activity.

It also creates a wonderful keepsake. The craft could easily be adapted so your child uses green wax crayons or felt tip pens to decorate the clothespins instead of paint.

More Very Hungry Caterpillar Activities

We have plenty of other Very Hungry Caterpillar activities to inspire your play:

As we had created a clothespin hungry caterpillar we couldn’t resist creating a clothespin butterfly to compliment the story. Read how to create your own peg butterfly.

Check out The Very Hungry Caterpillar Sense of Taste. Introduce your child to banana, satsumas, kiwi, grapes and raisins, and red apples with this messy play activity.