Eric Carle’s award winning book, The Hungry Caterpillar is such a fun book to base children’s art and sensory activities around.
Green is a nice calming colour and when the little ones need something relaxing and calming to do, painting some recycled materials for a bit of 3D art is always a favourite. I love to save cardboard egg cartons, and cardboard circular fruit holders. Turned upside down and painted green, these make a great beginning for a hungry caterpillar. Children find it fun and engaging to use their paint brushes to cover up all the cardboard with green paint.
It is loads of fun to invite preschoolers to decorate their caterpillar later on once all that green paint is dry. Having bits of different art materials or recycled materials on hand is fabulous so they can chose from different mediums and just have fun choosing how to decorate their caterpillar. Odds and ends like pipe cleaners, big buttons, bottle caps, bits of crepe or shiny paper.
I also like to have a supply of clothes pegs that children can peg onto the caterpillar to make legs as this is excellent fine motor skill practice and when they put on the legs in sets of two this is also a great hands-on one-to-one correspondence learning activity.
I love hearing what children say as they are choosing their art items for decorating and gluing. Listening to what children say when they are fully engaged with an art activity always helps me learn more about how they think and what interests them.
After we have made our own 3D art caterpillar, I introduce The Hungry Caterpillar book to the little ones for story time. We invite our own 3D art caterpillars to story time and all help to feed it.
This beautiful award-winning story lends itself so naturally to learning about colours and counting and the food vocabulary. Preschool children love to have their little hands engaged and busy with a task as part of enjoying a good story. I like to use a 3D art caterpillar made from cardboard egg holders or fruit holders as when lifted up off a table, there is an ‘empty space’ for the bits of food to go into which also engages the little ones hands and eyes.
I love painting with preschoolers. I love the mess, the colours, the excitement. Another fun story extension is having a great big paper butterfly outline and then inviting the children to each add a bit of colour and paint a bit of the butterfly’s wings. This is a lovely group art project, it helps support young children’s social skills as they learn about collaborating together on a project. And it also helps me learn about the way children think, the way they see things, and what they see as beautiful and colourful. These art, play, and painting projects all make for a wonderful way to talk more about the story in the days and weeks following as they get to ‘show and tell’ their lovely artistic creations.