The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is one of the children's books that I frequently use for my English classes with kids who learn English as a foreign language. The book is short and simple enough to read with elementary school students. Educators and parents read the story of the very hungry caterpillar with preschoolers and even toddlers in English speaking countries. However, since I teach English to children who are just starting to learn English, I mostly use the book for my classes with 1st graders. And I have designed some
printable activities, worksheets, flashcards, and a poster to get the maximum out of the book as an EFL teacher. So I'd like to share some of the visually enhanced activities I use along with "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" book to teach English to children.
Reading and Phonics
Although the story about the very hungry caterpillar is quite short, there are a
bunch of words that can be tricky for EFL students. That's why we pay special attention to learning how to read these words correctly and how certain combinations of letters form
diphthongs and digraphs. A few printable worksheets help me with this.
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| The book has a lot of tricky words that kids have to learn how to read correctly. |
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| The worksheet that focuses on combination of letters that form diphthongs and digraphs. |
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| This matching worksheet helps students figure out English phonics. |
Vocabulary
The Very Hungry Caterpillar book has a lot of frequently used words that kids can learn and memorize. Such as the food vocabulary, days of the week, numbers, nature vocabulary. I offer students a few activities designed to help them memorize the vocabulary. The activities include
matching and sorting tasks, a crossword puzzle, and a word search puzzle. I also use
28 colorful flashcards to introduce some nouns from the book. I use the flashcards not only as a tool to visualize the vocabulary and thus help kids better memorize the words but also as material for all sorts of activities such as matching words to pictures.
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| Picture to word matching activity. |
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| Crosswords are a great help for memorizing vocabulary and word spelling. |
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| Word search puzzles help memorize words too. |
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| This matching activity helps kids learn English numbers up to 5. |
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| Visually appealing flashcards help students learn 28 English nouns featured in The Very Hungry Caterpillar book. |
Some worksheets help me introduce relevant vocabulary which is not in the book. For instance, English names of colors and categories of food.
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| This sorting activity help children learn colors in English. |
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| This sorting activity helps kids learn about different kids of food. |
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| Cut-out cards are used for some printable worksheets. |
Reading Comprehension and Discussion
There are reading comprehension activities based on the story. They help determine how well kids understood and remembered what they had read.
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| A reading comprehension activity based on the very hungry caterpillar story. |
Sometimes, after reading the book, we talk about things like healthy and unhealthy food and the life cycle of a caterpillar. A worksheet and a poster help me make the discussion more fun and visually enhanced.
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| Healthy and unhealthy food sorting worksheet. |
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| Printable caterpillar life cycle poster printed on an A1 paper sheet (594 × 841 mm, 23.4 × 33.1 inches). |
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