THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR activities and lesson plan ideas

Save yourself time and engage your students with these The Very Hungry Caterpillar activities. This jam-packed book companion is quick and easy to use - Just print and go!

Read on to learn more about all that is included in this standards-based interactive read aloud packet based on the children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

TO SAVE YOU TIME, WE'VE DONE ALL OF THE WORK FOR YOU!

1. We chose vocabulary words & kid-friendly definitions.
2. We selected mentor sentences & specific grammar skills for each.
3. We wrote 30 book-based writing prompts (that cover 10 genres of writing).
4. We identified an SEL focus / character education topic based on events in the story.
5. We constructed strategy-based reading comprehension questions and created no-prep, print-and-go reader response worksheets.

YOU ONLY NEED TO DO 3 QUICK & EASY STEPS:

STEP 1: PLAN

Simply customize your The Very Hungry Caterpillar lesson plans using the ideas in the teaching guide and choose from the 15 standards-based activities.

STEP 2: PREP

Prep can be as simple as printing the activity pages (or assigning the included digital version) and finding a free video of the book being read aloud online.

OPTIONAL: If you want to dive deeper into a book study, you’ll find our teaching ideas and slides make it easy to create mini-lessons, anchor charts, and slideshows.

STEP 3: TEACH

Engage your students with an interactive read aloud by reading or streaming the picture book. Practice reading comprehension strategies with text-based discussion questions. We even wrote the The Very Hungry Caterpillar comprehension questions for you!

Some teachers like to assemble and assign independent work packets. Others prefer to dive deeper into the story with vocabulary, grammar, SEL, and writing lessons that can span over several days.

THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR BOOK COMPANION FOCUSES ON:

◼️READING SKILLS

☐ ANALYZING ILLUSTRATIONS

☐ MAKING PREDICTIONS

☐ SEQUENCING

☐ SUMMARIZING / RETELLING

☐ VISUALIZING

◼️GRAMMAR

☐ SHADES OF MEANING

☐ COMMAS

☐ PROPER NOUNS

☐ ADJECTIVES

◼️SEL

☐ SELF-REGULATION

THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR SUMMARY

Students will love Eric Carle’s famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In this book, a caterpillar hatches from an egg and is feeling very hungry. He starts by eating through different fruits such as an apple, two pears and three plums. After eating through various fruits, the caterpillar is still hungry! That’s when he eats through a lot more food. This time, the caterpillar eats through foods such as cake, cupcakes, a lollipop, sausage and salami. Now he has a stomach ache! The next day the caterpillar eats through a nice green leaf and is feeling better. He is a lot bigger now and starts to make himself a cocoon. At the end of the story, the caterpillar eats through the cocoon and emerges as a butterfly!

This book explores topics  such as counting, days of the week, self-regulation, and sequencing. It is such an adorable story and will be a favorite story among students.

THIS COLLECTION OF ACTIVITIES and LESSON IDEAS INCLUDES:

➜ Comprehension Questions categorized by reading strategy; text-dependent
➜ Social Emotional Learning guidance lesson ideas & discussion topics based on the story
➜ Vocabulary Activities with kid-friendly definitions
➜ Grammar Topics selected to align with the text
➜ Focus Sentences use the book & author's craft as a mentor text to improve writing
➜ Lesson Planner summary, background info and planning space

➜ Story Mapping Printable identify character, setting, problem and solution

➜ Making Words Activity Page use any word from the book

➜ Focus Sentence copy work, identifying elements of the sentence, rewriting)

➜ Design a New Book Cover demonstrate understanding of the text by creating an illustration

➜ Predicting Activity primary-ruled and wider-ruled versions
➜ Summarizing Somebody → Wanted → But → Then → Finally

➜ Comparing and Contrasting using a Venn Diagram

➜ Cause and Effect analyze how events affect one another

➜ Visualization illustrate visualizations from the story and support thinking with text-based evidence

➜ Making Connections identify text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections

➜ Thematic Writing Paper Use with the Writing Prompts... Makes a Great Bulletin Board

➜ 2 Sequencing Activities First → Next → Then → Last and Beginning → Middle → End

➜ 2 Vocabulary Activities Vocabulary Booklet and Word Mapping

➜ 2 Character Trait Activities listing traits and supporting traits with text-based evidence
➜ 30 Text-Based Writing Prompts 3 prompts for each of the following types of writing:

• narrative
• persuasive / opinion
• descriptive
• expository / informative
• creative / story writing
• procedure / how-to
• list making
• letter / postcard writing
• poem
• book reviews

INCLUDED DIGITAL ACTIVITIES:

➜ 5 Teaching Slides to use for instruction (add questions, vocabulary, instructions, etc)

➜ 15 Student Pages for use in Google™️ Classroom or as editable files to create customized printables