The Very Hungry Catperillar

Title: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Written and Illustrated by: Eric Carle

Recommended Grade Level: Pre-k through 1st grade

NCTM Content Standard: Numbers and Operations.  This book teaches children about counting, how to represent numbers, and relationships among numbers. 

Summary: This is the story of a very hungry caterpillar who, over the course of a eight days, eats his way through a variety of foods.  Each day, the amount that he eats increases. For example, on Monday he eats one apple, on Tuesday he eats two pears, and so forth.  The caterpillar finally becomes so big and full, that he builds a cocoon for himself and rests for two whole weeks until he turns into a beautiful butterfly. 

Uses:   The teacher could give each child a pile of cards (in random order) with pictures of the different types of fruit from the story. So, for example, there would be one card with an apple, one card with two pears, one card with three plums etc. After reading the book, the students would be asked to put the cards in order from beginning to end of the story.  Another possible activity would be for the children to each make their own "Very Hungry Caterpillar" book.  The teacher could pass out the food picture cards, as well as booklets with  8 blank pages, for each day of the week from sunday to sunday. The pages would have the day of the week written at the top. The children could paste the picture cards on the corresponding pages in their booklets, and they could also draw the caterpillar on each page, as he becomes bigger and bigger.  On the last page, they could draw the beautiful butterfly! There are countless activities that can be used with this book to teach children about counting, nutrition, how caterpillars turn into butterflies, and the days of the week!