Hungry Caterpillar Art Project

My youngest son's literacy skills are growing leaps and bounds. When I was volunteering in his kindergarten class last week, I noticed one of his classmate's reading Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

We have the board book at home, but I'd foolishly thought of it as a baby book. Not so! Most of the words are ones my son could read on his own.

To go with the book, we got out our art supplies.

Watercolor paper
Watercolor paints and brushes
scissors
paper punch
permanent black markers
pom-poms
googly eyes
pencil
low-temp glue gun (school glue could also be used)

First we drew a big leaf on a large piece of art paper and used green watercolor paints to fill it in. When dried, we traced our lines and added veins to the leaf with a black permanent marker.

Once we cut the leaf out, we were able to use the paper punch to add the caterpillar's nibbles from the leaf.

I put a thick line of glue on the leaves with the low-temp glue gun and we added the pom-poms in a row to make a hungry caterpillar.

A dab of glue on the googly eyes made it possible to give our caterpillar sight.

This was a simple project that only took a few supplies and the results are positively charming. 

If you have never read the book to (or with) your child, do it!

Can't get to the library, watch this video of Eric Carle reading his book.

This great project was inspired by the Hudsonville Art Program.