The Very Hungry Caterpillar DIY Board Game

Now that my girls are older, we’ve given away many of the board books we had when they were babies and toddlers. We’ve only kept a few, a few well-loved books that we still love to read.

One of the favorites that we kept was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.

So, when Penguin Kids contacted us and asked us if we would like to help celebrate the 45th Anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by creating an activity, we jumped at the chance.

Once I asked the girls if they would like to help create a project based on the book, immediately began brainstorming.

My first grader was practically jumping out of her chair in excitement.

You see, she’s a big fan. BIG. She’s always loved Eric Carle books, but she’s become an even bigger fan of Eric Carle ever since they learned about him and his illustrations in art class.

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My super-fan took over this project and my preschooler and I became her helpers. We were going to create our very own The Very Hungry Caterpillar board game.

After much discussion, the girls came up with the concept for the game.

You would begin on a big green leaf and your caterpillar would travel through all the yummy food until he reached a cocoon at the end.

Once that was figured out, we set to work making our game board.

The girls created the different food. My preschooler was in charge of the fruit and my first grader created all the junk food.

We then made a few little caterpillars to use as our game pieces.

After the paint dried, we cut out all of our food and our caterpillars.

We found a few rocks for our game pieces and used Mod Podge to secure our caterpillars to our rocks.

How to use Mod Podge

To use the Mod Podge, just brush an even coat over your rock.

Stick your caterpillar down and smooth it out.

Finally, brush another even coat of Mod Podge over the caterpillar and your rock.

The Mod Podge needs to dry for at least an hour.

It’s an easy process and my preschooler was able to do it all on her own.

If you don’t have Mod Podge, you can also create your game pieces by painting a caterpillar directly onto the rock.

Making our Very Hungry Caterpillar game board

After we cut out our food pieces, we arranged them on a sheet of 8-1/2 x 14 inch paper.

I had drawn the the leaf and the cocoon directly onto the paper.

We then laid out our food to make a path from the leaf to the cocoon. We started with the fruit and moved onto the junk food just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar did in the book.

Once we were satisfied with our arrangement, we glued each of the pieces of food down to our paper.

We grabbed a dice from another game and got ready to play.

Game play is simple

We kept the game play simple.

Each person starts on the leaf.

Throw the dice and move that many places.

The person who gets to the cocoon first wins.

It’s simple. It’s quick. And, it’s fun.

But, really, playing the game wasn’t what mattered in this project. What mattered was using our creativity to create the game and paying homage to a very favorite book at the same time.

Thank you Penguin Kids for extending the invitation to participate!

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