The Hungry Caterpillar Small World Play

This is a great way to encourage your children to act out the story of the Hungry Caterpillar in small world form. We had been reading the story this week and they both enjoyed the story. Orally retelling a story is a really important step in not only reading development but also writing.

Set Up

So this activity did take a little more prep than most activities I do but in the grand scheme of things it was not that time consuming. The soil is made from cheap ground coffee and also semolina. I chose food items from the girls’ toys box and luckily we had the caterpillar gifted from when my first was born. But you could make your own caterpillar from play dough instead.

The small people were quick to start playing and initially were simply interested in feeding the caterpillar. Then they started to explore what else was in the box and found the leaves that I had hidden in the soil and the butterfly eggs (butter beans). Once my eldest daughter found these she started to use all the props to retell the story. Obviously it wasn’t quite the same as the original book but this did not matter as she was creating her own story for her sister.

After a while the girls started their own messy play activity instead and the sand and soil were mixed, sprinkled, scattered and poured in and out of the box. I was a little anxious at first as hadn’t planned on it getting messy but they had fun and I just hoovered it all up afterwards!