Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Very Hungry Caterpillar will find this post helpful. It includes resource recommendations, free teaching ideas, and information about the book. You’ll have everything you need to deliver engaging interactive read aloud lessons based on this story.
With themes of self-regulation, this The Very Hungry Caterpillar picture book by Eric Carle is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. It will be a big hit in your classroom too! Learn more about this book below!
Engage Your Students with The Very Hungry Caterpillar Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You can find it in the section below.
- Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
- Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with The Very Hungry Caterpillar reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR SUMMARY
Students will love Eric Carle’s famous book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. In this book, a caterpillar hatches from an egg and is feeling very hungry. He starts by eating through different fruits such as an apple, two pears and three plums. After eating through various fruits, the caterpillar is still hungry! That’s when he eats through a lot more food. This time, the caterpillar eats through foods such as cake, cupcakes, a lollipop, sausage and salami. Now he has a stomach ache! The next day the caterpillar eats through a nice green leaf and is feeling better. He is a lot bigger now and starts to make himself a cocoon. At the end of the story, the caterpillar eats through the cocoon and emerges as a butterfly!
This book explores topics such as counting, days of the week, self-regulation, and sequencing. It is such an adorable story and will be a favorite story among students.
THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR LESSON PLAN IDEAS
Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.
When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.
We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.
READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
The text-based The Very Hungry Caterpillar reading comprehension questions focus on:
- analyzing illustrations
- making predictions
- sequencing
- summarizing/retelling
- visualizing
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- self-regulation
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- shades of meaning
- commas
- proper nouns
- adjectives
THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR ACTIVITIES
You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:
- comprehension questions
- 30 writing prompts with themed paper
- vocabulary activities
- word study print & go activities
- ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
- social emotional learning discussion topics
- graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?
BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
- Lexile® Measure: 406L
- Guided Reading Level: J
- DRA Level: 16
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.9
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Eric Carle. It was illustrated by Eric Carle.
What genre is The Very Hungry Caterpillar?
It is a fiction book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.
How many pages are in the book?
The story is 32 pages long.
