The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is one of those picture books that earns its place on the shelf. It carries the days of the week, counting, healthy eating, and the whole caterpillar-to-butterfly life cycle, all inside a story a small child asks for again and again. This craft turns the caterpillar into something a child builds with their own hands: a row of green-painted clothespins clipped along a curved base, with a red clip for the famous head. The clipping is the fine motor work, and the finished caterpillar makes a keepsake that lasts for years. Ages 3 to 6.
What you need
- A pack of wooden clothespins (spring pegs). A dozen or so for the body, plus two for the head.
- Green paint in two shades, and a little red paint for the head. Acrylic gives the best coverage on wood; poster paint works but needs more coats.
- A zip-top sandwich bag, for the mess-free painting trick.
- Craft foam scraps in yellow, green, blue, and purple for the eyes and antennae.
- A base to clip the pegs onto: a recycled polystyrene circle, or a strip of card stock cut into a long, shallow C shape.
- Craft glue. Foam glue holds better than white school glue if you have it.
Painting the clothespins the easy way
Painting individual clothespins with a brush is fiddly and slow. The shortcut: drop a handful of pegs into a zip-top bag, squeeze in some green paint, seal the bag, and let a child squish and squash it until every peg is coated. Use two bags with two shades of green for a bit of variation along the caterpillar’s body. Tip the pegs out onto a tray lined with parchment paper and leave them to dry fully. The squishing is itself a satisfying job for small hands, and nobody ends up green to the elbows.
Making the head
Paint two pegs red for the caterpillar’s head. Once dry, cut two large ovals from yellow craft foam and two smaller ovals from green foam, layer them for the eyes, and glue them on. Add a couple of short foam strips in blue and purple for the antennae. Keep it simple: a couple of foam shapes read clearly as the Hungry Caterpillar’s face.
Building the body
Now the part a child does. Clip the green pegs one at a time along the curved base. If you use a polystyrene circle, a child has something solid to grip while they work the pegs around the edge, and you trim the polystyrene away afterward so only the peg ring shows. If you use a C-shaped strip of card, the pegs clip straight along it and the caterpillar curves the way it does on the book cover.
Opening and closing a clothespin is exactly the pincer-grip, thumb-and-finger squeeze that builds the hand strength a child needs later for holding a pencil. A dozen pegs is a dozen reps without it ever feeling like practice. Clip the red head pegs on at one end and the caterpillar is done.
Why it keeps
This one outlasts most crafts. The pegs are wood, the paint is sealed, and the whole thing sits happily on a shelf or a windowsill for years. Ours has traveled to school for a Hungry Caterpillar reading week and come back intact. It makes a genuine keepsake, with the bonus that a child built every clip of it themselves.
If paint feels like too much mess on a given day, the craft adapts: a child can color the pegs with green wax crayons or felt-tip pens instead, and the clipping part stays exactly the same.
For another book-themed craft that turns into a play piece, our make your own Supertato builds a character from a potato and a few craft scraps. And for a quieter sit-down option in the same age band, our free animal coloring pages carry the bug-and-creature theme onto paper.