Creepy Crawly Coloured Caterpillar - platefuls of fun!

Cover of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I have very fond memories of reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (in Japanese!) from a young age, and I have been looking for a way to incorporate and share one of my childhood memories with my students in a functional and constructive way. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of the book so I had to come up with an alternative method. After having a little think and brainstorming some ideas I settled on something that I thought would capture the interest of my students as well as providing a bit of variety in the classroom. So I would like to present to you my most recent classroom project: the "Coloured Caterpillar"!

Our new classroom friend

The idea revolves around making a caterpillar using either coloured card or painted paper plates which are in turn used to make up the different segments of the caterpillar. You then cut out an assortment of shapes, numbers, letters or whatever else you think would suit the activity, from coloured card which the students have to sort into the corresponding coloured segments of your "Coloured Caterpillar". You can stick the caterpillar to a table or even on the wall or your whiteboard/blackboard! If you are planning to stick your caterpillar to the wall/board you're also going to need a way for sticking your shapes/numbers/letters too.

Fun with paints!

You may be thinking that making the caterpillar is going to be a major investment of time and effort, but this is where your students come to the rescue. Rather than make the caterpillar myself, I decided that for this activity to become a success the more hands on approach the students had the better. I also didn't fancy spending an evening painting paper plates on my own. So I roped them into caterpillar making duty. What better way to engage the students by using resources that they have helped make themselves!

In the "zone"

I have to admit thought that I was a little hesitant before launching into this project, especially as I had planned for my youngest students to shoulder the responsibility of painting the paper plates. I had a bad feeling the students would become more preoccupied in painting anything but the paper plates! However, when I broke out the paint and paintbrushes my fears were laid to rest. The students took to the activity like a charm, they were the most focused and well behaved I had ever seen them. It was like magic. Unfortunately due to paint needing to dry, we weren't able to put out caterpillar to use immediately so the students had to wait patiently for their next lesson before they had a chance to admire their work.

Showing off

A job well done

Shapes to sort

So one week came and went and it was time for the big reveal. The long wait was over and the students were finally able to see their painted paper plates come to life in the form of a colourful caterpillar. As you could imagine the students were terribly excited, and once we had stuck down our caterpillar they dived into the tray of cut out shapes and started sorting at break neck speeds! The first time we used our "Coloured Caterpillar" we used shapes cut out from coloured card, and we have since moved onto using numbers and letters as well. I have used the

Diving in

"Coloured Caterpillar in several of my other younger classes too, one of them even making the connection to "Harapeko Aomushi" ("The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in Japanese) which I was delighted by! By using the "Coloured Caterpillar" my students have become more adept at recognising shapes, numbers and letters and can sort by each category. I think it's safe to say this project was a success!

If you decide to create your own "Coloured Caterpillar" for your classroom please share your pictures and any feedback you have! 

Damian Gowland

Colours & numbers - kids in action

My students know the song quite well, but we haven't "done it this way" before. The Super Simple Song is just as it says on the tin, and very suitable for even very young learners. I wanted to make it a bit harder today, so we had a lot of flashcards on the floor, including numbers (more on that in a mo).

Make sure kids aren't going to dive headfirst at each other to get to the cards first (important!). As they hear the song mention colours, touch the card, then find other things that match around the room (having an interesting/colourful room helps a lot!).

After the song, a sit down - sort of! Leaving the flashcards on the floor we played colour bingo. Again, a bit too easy as most children quickly 'get' colours, so I wrote the word (blue, green etc) slowly on the board, asking the children to read the letters to me as I did so (taking a while to get fluent here). "That's it" = cue to go find the flashcard with the matching word - turn it over to reveal the colour. Get back to the table and do the bingo thing.

The actual bingo became a side show against the fun of reading out the words and finding the same spelling quickly.

We played the same game with numbers, and then placed the cards along the chalk board rail under the same (number) word (out of order). We played a "janken game" in teams - start either end of the row of cards, and read the card/say what is on it. When players meet in the middle, they do 'rock/scissors/paper' to decide a winner - who continues on while the other team replaces their player & start at their beginning again. This can get very noisy but is nice and simple, takes very little prep and is monitored by everyone! Weaker ones can go last & see how to do it/get prompting from team etc. I always answer if kids ask me nicely "What's this, please"!

Once we were done with the bingo game, I played another Super Simple Song "Seven Steps" and asked the children to point to the numbers in time to the music. Harder than you think! Remember, on a bingo card all the numbers are in different sequences...guaranteed giggles and re-starts & pleading to do it again (just what I wanted to do, but it was their idea!)

How do you teach colours & numbers after the first time?