The very hungry caterpillar

Activities

Are you thinking about activities you can do with your pupils after reading this book? Check out the following ones!

Activity 1 - What does the very hungry caterpillar eat today?

Children have to drag both the correct day of the week and the fruit the very hungry caterpillar ate this day.The goal of the activity is that the children should be able to recognize the written words of days of the week and fruits.

We can use questions like:

- What day is today? 

-  Can you find the word for ‘Monday’?...

-  What does the caterpillar eat on Monday?...

-  Can you find the word for Apple?...

- Can you put them in their boxes?

Activity 2 - Guessing what word is 

The teacher plays the drum a number of times according to the syllables of a word choosen and children have to identify what the word is. 

In the case in which there are several words with the same number of syllables, we can help children identify the word using some clues: the final sound of the word, the first letter,...

Activity 3 - I spy...

Children have to guess the word seeing the picture and write it in the spaces. It can be more than one possibility for each picture.

For working with this activity we use the idea of “I spy with my little eye something that…”

Examples of clues:

· It´s in the picture

· Ends with the letter …

· Has the letter … in it

· Has … letters

· Fits in the sentence: …

Activity 4 - Rhyming words

The words fat and big are very important in the story. For this reason the teacher gives children the possiblily to find words that rhymes with them.

The teacher will interact with the children asking questions like:

-       What is this? Can you read the word?

-       And wig rhymes with fat? Mm… And with big? Wig- big.

-       Can you say the middle sound of wig? And the final sound? Can you say both together?

-       Can you say the middle sound of big? And the final sound? Can you say both together?

Activity 5 - Point the words

In this activity, we work with high frecuency words related with the story “The very hungry caterpillar”. We use a Word Wall, and the children have to point specific words, acording to the following intructions:

-       Can you point a word that ends with the letter “e?”

-       Can you point a word that starts with the letter “c”?

-       Can you point a word that has two syllables?

-       Can you point a word that means “very small”?

-       Can you point a word that makes sense in this sentence: “he was ___ very hungry”?

-       Can you point a compound word?

Activity 6 - Do you remember the story?

Children have to listen carefully to the teacher when she read a word. Then, the whole class will discuss where we should put this word: at the begging, at the middle or at the end. Finally the teacher will put the word in the correct box. 

We can use questions like:

- When appear the word ‘egg’?...

- Can you find the word “ice-cream”? Can you stand up and point it?...

- How was the caterpillar at the beginning? Tiny, isn’t it? And when it ate so much food, how was it? So we put “big” in the beginning or the middle?

- Can you drag the word for me?...

Fat cat on a mat

Getting literacy targets

This magnific story for first level of primary can help us to achieve literacy targets related to reading and writing. One of them is dentify the sounds of thymes. Here you can see a part of an activity in which the teacher say the sentence and children locate the rhyming words. In anyway, you can do it without using high technology. 

Using word walls

Besides, it's very useful to have a story word wall in the classroom with content and also high frequency words. In this way you are helping your students to review their language and revisit the story. Here you can see an example which belongs to the end of the story. But you can take more advantage of this choosing rhyming words and also putting them in different prompcards. So they will be able to manipulate and play with them. 

Classifying syllables 

Finally, as teacher you should know the types of syllables in the words appeared in the stories you read with your pupils. Something is clear: the more you know the different words, the more easily you will teach them. Here you have a nice table with most of the words used in Fat cat on a mat. As you can see, CVC words are the most common. 

 Representing scenes

Another form to enjoy the story is to let your students make groups and choose one scene of the book. They have to represent it by acting as statues. Then, you have to encourage the rest of the children to describe what is happening in that specific moment.

Recommended books

Here you can see a list of recommended books for Primary. Any of them is useful to avhieve reading and writing targets according to the age. They may be used in timetabled time for teacher-led reading, independent reading, for reading at home and for independent reading during the literacy hour. 

Fiction books

Year 1 - Fat cat on a mat

Year 2 - The very hungry caterpillar

Year 3 - Lazy Jack

 Year 4 - The owl who was afraid of the dark

Year 5 - The true story of the three little pigs

Year 6 - Kensuke's Kingdom

Non-fiction books 

Year 1 - I spy an alphabet in art

Year 2 - The drop goes plop

The monk and the fish

This voiceless story of Michäel Dudok is wonderful. It has so many posibilities with the children and one of them is building the story again. For this, you can follow a specific structure which consists of settling, characters, beginning, middle and end.